


That Deathless Death

by Applesaday



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Kara is smart af, Lena is a vampire AU, this is basically an excuse for me to do a vampire au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27312322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Applesaday/pseuds/Applesaday
Summary: Vampires were real.It wasn’t such a groundbreaking piece of information as you would think. It was a well-known fact, vampires had existed since the middle ages wherein a wannabe warlock had meddled with things he wasn’t supposed to.From there vampires had only grown in numbers, at one point they were surpassing the human population. And then the Salem witch trials came, you can imagine what happened.After that point in time, the vampire population had all but been exterminated. In fact, as far as common knowledge went, there was only one vampire that remained.Lena Luthor. And she was looking for a secretary.or: Lena's a vampire, Kara is her new extremely smart secretary, and they have feelings for each other.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 191
Kudos: 502





	1. Quantum Entanglement

**Author's Note:**

> So, as one of the hosts of the SCBB I would be remiss if I didn't participate in the Fall/Halloween prompts event, and for some reason I decided that a vampire AU would be a nice, and simple thing to do.
> 
> If anyone knows me, then you know that I cannot do simple and short fics. It generally tends to spiral and snowball away from me, which has led to this. Somehow I'm still writing, it's over 12k, and I'm just going to start posting.
> 
> I even dusted off my editing skills to make the cover for this fic.
> 
> Enjoy~

* * *

Vampires were real.

It wasn’t such a groundbreaking piece of information as you would think. It was a well-known fact, vampires had existed since the middle ages wherein a wannabe warlock had meddled with things he wasn’t supposed to.

Men.

From there vampires had only grown in numbers, at one point they were surpassing the human population. And then the Salem witch trials came, you can imagine what happened.

After that point in time, the vampire population had all but been exterminated. In fact, as far as common knowledge went, there was only one vampire that remained.

Lena Luthor.

She came from one of the oldest vampire families, but you’d never be able to tell her real age just by looking at her. Her persistent 20’s-something look was something that astounded many who longed for their own youthfulness. She also had an old-world beauty about her, with pronounced cheekbones and green eyes that seemed to regard everything intently. But there was a dark and almost dangerous edge to her that you could never quite pin down.

Well, perhaps it was her intelligence. To say that Lena was smart would be stating the obvious. She had established one of the most well-known cutting edge tech companies that there were, and despite some people’s reluctance to work for an actual vampire, she always had people flocking to apply there. With her seemingly endless knowledge about anything and everything, likely stemming from the centuries of roaming the earth, she had what could be only called a galaxy brain at resolving problems before people even knew about them.

Perhaps it was the rumour that, many lifetimes ago, she was a cold-blooded murderer. But then again, between the statute of limitations, and the fact that nothing had ever been proven, it would forever remain just that: a rumour.

Or maybe, perhaps it was the fact that she had a way of talking that made men cower in front of her, and women’s knees go weak.

Whatever it was, she was formidable. And she was looking for a secretary.

* * *

“Absolutely not,” Alex said, setting the coffee pot a little too firmly onto the countertop.

Kara sighed, sinking her head into her arms. “Come on, it’d be better than working for that Edge guy!”

“Why can’t you find a job literally  _ anywhere _ else Kara? How about CatCo?” Alex suggested. Her sister could really be a pain sometimes.

Raising her head a bit, Kara made a face. “Because science and technology is my thing, not fashion shows. Besides, CatCo isn’t hiring, and L-Corp is.”

“I wonder why,” Alex muttered, grabbing her cup of coffee and sipping from it. “Anyway, why are you even asking me? You know I wouldn’t agree to it.”

“Because,” Kara answered with a splutter, as if that explained everything. It didn’t, but she wasn’t so sure she wanted Alex to know that she herself wasn’t completely sure about the idea.

Kara had always been good with scientific things and technology. Coming from Krypton, even as a young teenager she already knew so much more than humans when it came to technological advancements and scientific discoveries, but she had to hide that fact. Secretly, in her spare time, she created and fiddled with machinations, using her advanced knowledge to create different inventions. Like the necklace she had with her house’s crest. While it looked like a normal necklace, it allowed Kara to live her life without her powers, and better yet - without having to use Kryptonite to achieve it. 

It might not seem like much, but it made a world of difference to Kara. She had always been an outsider due to her alien heritage - even Alex had been slow to accept her new ‘sister’ - but with the necklace, she could pretend she was just a regular human, and over time, it had helped to bring the sisters closer together, and made Kara feel less alone. 

But for all of the fiddling and trying to pass as a human, Kara still felt there was a chasm between them, particularly when it came to science. Sure, Alex was brilliant in her studies, but to her, Kara’s knowledge from Krypton was something out of a sci-fi movie.

However, there was one person who had no such reservations about limitless scientific discoveries and technological advancements. It’s what made Kara want to work for the likes of Lena Luthor.

Except... running the risk of becoming vampire food? That was less desirable. Then again, there was no proof that the vampire would do such a thing. Clearly she was looking for an assistant to help her at her job of running her Fortune 500 company. Nothing more.

“Are you going to finish that sentence or am I supposed to divine what you mean just through mere thought?” Alex asked, having drank most of the coffee in her cup by that point.

Steeling her resolve, Kara responded, “Because I wasn’t asking you. This is something I want to pursue. And I am going to go for that interview. I was merely informing you.”

“Sure,” Alex said with a mirthless and wry chuckle, putting her mug on the sink. “You enjoy that. I have to get to work.”

At first Kara was silent as Alex made her way to the door. But then she found her voice.

“I don’t rag you for the job you do, you could at least try to be somewhat supportive.” Being a government analyst didn’t sound like the most glamorous of jobs, but somehow Alex found it fulfilling.

Alex merely gave Kara an unreadable look before she grabbed her jacket and left without another word.

With a sigh, Kara knew that Alex was mad at her. 

But who could blame Kara for her outburst? The opportunity to work for such a genius like Lena Luthor was too big to pass up. Sure, Kara knew that fetching coffee and taking calls wasn’t going to garner her any lab time, but at least her foot was in the door. Why couldn’t Alex understand that? She knew Alex had her reservations due to the fact that Lena was a vampire and with what had happened to Jeremiah, but Alex couldn’t possibly be holding a grudge on someone for the actions of others, could she?

Kara looked at the clock. She still had time before she had to go in for her interview, but she wanted to leave with plenty of time to spare, just in case.

If there was one thing that Kara’s machinations hadn’t been able to fix was her lack of fortune. It happened way too often for her liking, and she had no idea whether her luck would finally turn enough to grant her the job. She probably couldn’t make an impression with Lena Luthor, but she had to try. If Kara was honest, while she was making a pro & con list of whether or not to apply to the job at L-Corp, the fact that her apartment was getting a bit too expensive for her measly savings from her past summer jobs at Midvale to keep up was a big factor that convinced her to apply, despite the fleeting chances of success.

Finishing her own coffee, Kara brought her mug to the sink and she quickly washed her and Alex’s mug before she headed to her bedroom. She didn’t even have a proper closet, but rather a couple of clothes-racks that served as one. Yeah, she wasn’t winning any interior decorating awards.

Picking the best combo of clothing that said “I’m a serious adult but not too stuffy”, Kara got changed. Pulling a dark red cardigan over her head, she inspected her image in the mirror.

A young blonde woman looked back. Her navy blue pants were neatly pressed, her white button down shirt was crisp, the collar lying neatly and symmetrically over her cardigan, and she felt that she looked respectable. Now to take care of her face. Luckily, her alien genes allowed her to get away with minimal makeup, but still applied some to look presentable. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and the final touch were her black rimmed glasses. It wasn’t that she had bad eyesight, but rather that otherwise her x-ray vision sometimes escaped through her necklace charm, and in the past, Kara had gotten a few surprising eyefulls before getting her glasses made.

Nodding in an attempt to reassure herself, Kara grabbed her bag, her phone, and made her way to the L-Corp building.

When she got there and went up to the topmost floor, she saw that there were already a good handful of people waiting for the same interview. They were all showcasing various levels of nervousness, and Kara meekly sat down at one of the few remaining empty seats.

No one tried to talk to one another, as if they were pretending they were the only other person in the room. Suddenly the door burst open, and a girl left, expressionless. A woman, presumably Lena Luthor, called forth a name, and another girl went inside, closing the door behind her. One by one Kara watched as people went in, stone cold masks of professional indifference when they entered, and were barely holding their composure by the end of it.

The singular guy in the room looked at each of the girls that left with a boisterous air of confidence, only to find himself leaving his own interview looking like a kicked puppy.

Soon enough, Kara was the only one that remained, and the cool voice from the office called for her.

Kara stood up and made her way inside.

“Please close the door behind you,” came the instruction as soon as she crossed the threshold. Kara did as asked, taking the brushed steel door and closing it with a soft click.

She did a quick sweep of the room, noting an office that seemed part super professional and part more comfortable, with a plush white leather couch to the side. Probably for the long nights working if she had to wager a guess. But Kara didn’t get to look too much because she was absolutely smitten by the only other person in the room.

Kara sucked in a breath that barely masked her surprise. 

Lena Luthor’s beauty was no secret, but no amount of descriptions, paintings, or even photographs taken with the camera she herself had invented that allowed people to photograph vampires, could properly describe just how absolutely gorgeous she was. She was sitting behind her desk with her head down, luscious and long almost-black hair gathered in a neat ponytail that draped over her left shoulder, and she was wearing a red dress shirt with a black three-piece suit that looked like it was made for her. In fact, it was highly likely that it was.

It took all of Kara’s willpower to not go slack jawed right then and there. And even then she was sure she looked relatively dumbfounded.

At first, Lena Luthor didn’t look up at Kara. “Please come and sit down, any chair is fine.”

There were three chairs across from the desk that looked towards the interviewer, and Kara wondered if it was a test. It would explain the distraught faces. What if she picked the wrong chair? Was there a right chair? Why were chairs being used as a test in the first place?

It seemed that she hadn’t been the only one faced with the dilemma, as her interviewer felt compelled to add, with the faintest note of humour in her voice, “It’s really not a test, though it’s fascinating that everyone thinks it is.”

Once Kara had decided on the middle one, she and her interviewer locked eyes before Kara could sit and it was as if time had stopped. She had never seen someone with eyes so green. Then again, she had never met someone quite like Lena Luthor.

In her defense, Kara noticed that her interviewer looked quite taken with her as well, eyes quickly running all over what she could see of Kara. With a quick clear of her throat, the brunette stood up a bit and held her hand out. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Danvers.”

Kara smiled politely and took the hand, shaking it firmly, just as she had been taught. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but soft hands hadn't been it. In fact, from what she saw, the vampire’s skin was flawless. Then she remembered she had to say something. “The honour is all mine, Ms. Luthor.”

Her interviewer took her hand back as Kara sat down, and raised an inquisitive eyebrow as she sat in her chair and leaned back. “Oh?”

“Yeah! I’ve read all of your research papers and your inventions are revolutionary! Like-” Kara paused, noticing she was letting herself geek out for a second before she composed herself and fiddled with her glasses as she added. “Sorry, I tend to get a bit excited. I just really admire your work.”

The brunette’s expression was unreadable as she said, “I have to admit I’m surprised; the first thing people associate me with is with my vampiristic nature, not my contributions to humanity. It’s...refreshing.”

At that, Kara beamed. “Well it’s true.”

Lena Luthor leaned forward to rest her elbows on her desk, templing her fingers in front of her. “We shall see.”

As she launched into her questions, Lena Luthor kept a steady eye on Kara. It was a bit unnerving, and Kara wondered if the others had also been scrutinized as such. It would explain the reactions she had seen post-interview.

There were a few standard questions, with a few more complicated questions thrown into the mix, but still what you’d expect in an interview

Kara had been ready for the standard “Why do you want to work here?” and “Tell me more about your last job.” Hell, she’d even practised the terrible “What would you say is your greatest weakness?”

It’s not like she could say Kryptonite.

But nothing prepared her for the “What’s your stance on quantum entanglement?”

For what was probably a whole minute, Kara just stared, mouth somewhat agape.

It wasn’t that Kara didn’t know what quantum entanglement was, she most definitely did, but she had always worked so hard to repress her nerdier alien knowledge and usually stammered out a non-answer. While Kara had been in school, and even in college, she had purposefully gotten some questions wrong on exams as to not give away how much she might truly know. Especially if it was something that humans didn’t yet know.

And now, it felt like the entirety of the decision as to whether or not she would get the job was riding on her answering this one question.

Taking the silence and the slightly slackjaw expression as its own answer, her interviewer began closing her folder. “Well Ms. Danvers, I appreciate-”

“Wait!” Kara blurted, her right hand quickly rising to rest on the edge of the desk. Unlike the rest of the office, the desk looked antique, made of what was probably mahogany. “I’m sorry, you took me by surprise, I didn’t think you’d actually want to know, but I can answer the question, if you’d allow me?”

The brunette regarded Kara carefully, weighing her options. “Very well,” she decided.

After taking a deep breath, Kara began, “Well…”

* * *

Neither Kara nor Lena had ever met someone like the other. The interview wound up going hours into the late afternoon as the two women spent time talking about physics, quantum mechanics, nanites, biology, and chemical compositions, you name it. Kara didn’t feel like she had to dumb herself down for Lena, and Lena didn’t feel like she had to hide her knowledge for fear that she was ‘coming up with an evil plan to revive the vampire population and take over the world’, as if Lena didn’t have enough to deal with running her highly successful global company.

Kara had just finished telling Lena a funny science joke, and as their laughter died, Kara noticed that Lena sobered up very quickly, as if she realized she was being too familiar.

Clearing her throat, Lena rolled her shoulders back, face once more expressionless. “Well Ms. Danvers, you have impressed me. You’re hired.”

“Really?!” Kara could barely comprehend what was going on. She had half a mind to hug the other woman, but wisely curbed the notion. She couldn’t curb the ecstatic smile that blossomed on her face, but she made an effort to act sensibly. “Thank you so much, Ms. Luthor, I promise you won’t regret it.”

“I hope not, you seem to know your stuff,” Lena said with a nod. “I do have some stipulations and ground rules, but I’ll explain it all to you tomorrow after you sign some agreements - you were telling the truth when you said you were available to start tomorrow?”

Kara nodded eagerly. “Yep, I am.”

“Good, then be here at 9am sharp,” Lena concluded, standing up, holding her hand out once more. Kara did the same, and shook the offered hand, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically, but Lena didn’t comment on it. 

“See you tomorrow!” Kara said as she left, with a small wave that made Lena chuckle.

But before long, Lena had driven the enthusiasm from the interview far from her mind. She couldn’t let her guard down. This was just her new secretary, nothing more.


	2. The Do’s and Don'ts of Having a Vampire Boss

Kara had finished signing so many papers, she was sure that if someone were to put a blank sheet of paper in front of her, she would automatically move to sign it. After what seemed like hours, the trio of lawyers that had been in the CEO’s office feeding her said papers and explaining what each one meant and why she had to sign them had packed their things up and given Lena a brusque nod before they left, closing the door behind them.

And then Lena moved to sit forward and rested her elbows on her desk, looking right at Kara with that piercing gaze of hers.

“Now, with the formalities out of the way, I wanted to explain to you what you’ll be doing and what I expect of you.”

“Of course, Ms. Luthor,” Kara whipped out a notebook to take notes. She had been practising, wanting to get off on the right foot.

“Your main duties will be to answer the phones, fetch some things for me, and help manage my day-to-day schedule. Now, to help you, I will be providing you with a top of the line cell-phone. I’ve also programmed a calendar on your computer; when someone calls, I want you to run the event by me first before accepting anything. I will automatically let you know if I’m available, if I’m not there at the moment, you can just let the person know I will get back to them later. As you can imagine, I really don’t enjoy being booked for events that I’m not interested in.”

Kara nodded. “Gotcha. Are there any events that you for sure will turn down, or accept?”

Lena thought for a second. “I will most likely always accept charity functions unless I am otherwise busy. But anything coming from Edge and or Lord are an automatic no. Make anything up - say I have finally died, married Dracula, began a nudist vampire cult, I leave that up to you.”

Not able to hold herself back, Kara snorted and let out a few peals of laughter. She quickly tried to control her reaction, figuring this wasn’t earning her any favours, and between chuckles, she said, “I’m sorry Ms. Luthor, I didn’t mean to laugh, but you just listed those so flippantly and deadpan.”

Thankfully, Lena took it in stride, even flashing a small smile. “It’s quite alright. Whenever I take some time off, I return to find a wide variety of theories such as those. A few of my friends take pleasure in sending me the headlines, as if I haven’t heard of them before. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to come up with a wilder theory - they know I’m making excuses, obviously, but the dunces still insist on asking after being turned down time after time, so dumb question means dumb answer.”

Getting herself composed again, Kara nodded, but she was still sporting a large grin. “Got it. Anything else?”

“Yes, I will sometimes need you to draft up statements. You know, meaningful soundbites and comments on current events, you know the kind,” Lena explained. She continued to add a few more minor tasks, like a coffee order if she required it. “Now, I want to make one thing exceptionally clear: I did not hire you, nor are you here, to donate your blood to me, is that clear?”

Kara had stopped writing and looked up, confused. “I mean, yes, it is, but I wasn’t-”

Lena didn’t let Kara finish, “Perhaps it isn’t immediately there now, but I’m sure it will either eventually cross your mind, or someone within your social circle will suggest it.” Kara thought of Alex at that. “And I want to make it clear that you are here to be my secretary, nothing more. So again, is this clear?”

“Yes, Ms. Luthor,” Kara nodded.

“Good, now this brings me to my next point. For my...actual feeding needs, I have a partnership with the National City Blood Bank. They give me excess bags every once in a while and I have a reserve just in case. If I am running low I will ask you to get me some.”

With a nod, Kara made a note.

“Next, as you are surely aware, vampires are nocturnal creatures, I have my ways of getting around the city during the daytime.” Kara nodded once again, it was common knowledge that the vampire had made news by being the first CEO to normalize wearing a hoodie under her blazers and be seen walking around during the day with her hood up and large sunglasses. “But I also tend to work long nights. I know that traditionally, secretaries tend to stay as long as their bosses, but I believe that there are exceptions to the rule. In this case, you are not required to stay, and in fact, I would encourage you to keep a steady 9am to 6pm schedule.

“Lastly, and I implore you to heed it, do not _ever_ ask me how I’m doing. I know I sometimes look a little worse for wear, but trust me, I am fine, and I don’t need your pity. Is that clear?”

“Yep, crystal.” Kara wouldn’t even begin to try and understand where that demand came from, but she would try to heed it...even though Kara was the epitome of the type of person who most certainly would start asking how people were doing. Maybe Lena had surmised as much and was trying to be proactive?

“Good. That is all,” Lena said, clearly dismissing her. Kara briefly wondered if her new boss had taken inspiration from Miranda Priestly.

Shaking her head, Kara got settled in her desk. She familiarized herself with the computer, the phone, and all of the drawers, which were thankfully fully furnished and organized to a T. Whoever had been here before had left plenty of notes and tips and left nothing out of place. Kara wondered what had happened to her predecessor. All she had been able to garner from a piece of paper that had been left behind was that the ex-secretary’s name was Jess.

Leaving that mystery for another time, Kara decided to see what she had on her docket. There were already a few things on her to-do list, so she got right to it.

* * *

The first few weeks would end up being relatively uneventful. Kara had fallen into a fairly reliable schedule, and she was sure that even her boss was impressed.

“Ms. Danvers,” Lena’s voice came through the intercom speaker on the phone.

“Yes, Ms. Luthor?” Kara answered, pressing a button to communicate with her boss.

“I’d like for you to contact the blood bank - the number should be written there for you. Tell them it’s not urgent, but if they have some bags, I would be grateful.”

Instinctively, Kara nodded, even though her boss couldn’t see her. “Of course, I’ll get on that right away.”

“Excellent, let me know once you’re done and what they tell you.”

It’d turn out, dealing with the National City Blood Bank wasn’t as easy - or friendly - as Kara would have originally thought. The woman at the other end of the line, named Eve if Kara got the name right, was clearly new, and had no idea what was going on.

“I’m sorry, remind me, who needs these blood bags?” The tone she used to ask that question made Kara wonder if it would have been easier to ask Eve where she could score some hard drugs.

“It’s for Lena Luthor,” Kara stated. The sharp intake of breath that she received at that made Kara wonder just how untrained the girl on the other end of the line was. “Is there a problem?”

Eve cleared her throat. “Actually, can I call you back at this number? It won’t take long.”

“Yeah but-” Kara didn’t even manage to finish before Eve hung up. Talk about rude. She was sure that her boss would not be happy. Pressing the button to contact Lena, she said, “So I have good news and bad news.”

The line was silent for a moment before Kara heard a click and, “Oh?”

Kara was quickly learning that Lena had a tendency to use that as her default answer. It allowed her to not give any opinion on what was currently said, but still ask for more information.

“Right, there’s a new girl manning the phones, and she seemed reluctant to talk about the blood bags. When I told her it was for you, she kind of got skittish and said she would call me back and then she hung up on me.”

“I’m assuming this is the bad news?” Lena asked once Kara was finished. With an affirmative hum from Kara, Lena continued, “And the good news?”

“She said she wouldn’t take long?” Kara tried vainly. “Is there anyone you used to speak with that can help us?”

Lena sighed. “No, unfortunately the crowd there changes constantly, and the executive there just recently left, and while I had been hoping for a smooth transition, it seems we might have some issues with whoever is there now. Keep me apprised of any news.”

“Right, I will.”

When Eve finally did call her back, it wasn’t with good news. 

“So.” Eve cleared her throat and then began reading what was clearly a prepared statement. “ ‘The NCBB has officially ended any partnership or deal it had with the vampire known as Lena Luthor, and to that end, will no longer be providing any blood bags to her. While the previous administration had an agreement of some sort to provide excess blood bags to her, Mercy Graves, who took over operations two months ago, feels that the blood bank’s surplus should be given to humans, and only humans.’”

Kara harrumphed, ready to find some choice words to fire back, but was once more unceremoniously hung up on again before she could get a word in edgewise.

With a defeated sigh, Kara put the receiver back in its cradle and wondered how to break the news to her boss, sinking deeper into her chair.

“Well, that could have gone better.” Much to her luck, it seemed that Lena had been listening, and her voice coming through the phone’s speaker startled Kara.

Shooting back up like she’d been hit by lightning, Kara spluttered as she pressed the intercom button. “You heard everything?”

Lena hummed. “I heard the phone ring and patched myself in. Go figure that Mercy Graves is now in charge, I can certainly see her doing something like this. She….knew my brother.”

Kara cringed. Lex Luthor, who a few decades ago was the only other remaining vampire along with Lena, had gone a bit crazy trying to reestablish a vampirical tyranny, but it had led to his eventual demise….at the hands of Kara’s cousin no less. It hadn’t been Kal’s finest moment, but Kara shoved that story to the back of her mind. “I see, so she’s doing this out of revenge?”

“Something like that.” Kara wasn’t sure what had prompted her usually reclusive boss to open up, but she wasn’t going to call attention to it. Maybe it was the thick steel doors that separated them. “Mercy and her brother Otis were Lex’s fiercest human lieutenants, promised eternal life and all that once his plan was realized. They found out too little too late that he was using them as his patsies in case he got caught. And when that time came...well, Mercy became an only child with a grudge.”

“I’m sorry Ms. Luthor, that sounds terrible,” Kara lamented with a sigh.

“Yes well, no pity, remember?” Lena was quick to remind her.

Kara cringed at that, and tried to rectify that. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to say that I understood the situation and-”

“It’s fine Ms. Danvers. I will just have to find an alternative,” Lena interjected, sparing both of them from Kara’s attempt at saving face.

“Right. Do you want me to see if Metropolis’s blood bank can help? Or the hospital?”

“It’s fine, I’ll figure something out. Just leave it to me.” With that, the conversation ended and Kara was left with a sinking feeling that Lena’s blase attitude was an attempt to deflect her worry.

Particularly because day after day, Kara saw less of her boss. Lena locked herself up in her office, and would barely come out, nor would Kara be allowed to go in.

The one time she did was on a Wednesday morning a week after that conversation through the intercom, when Kara was delivering a coffee order. She timidly knocked on the door, holding the tray with Lena’s coffee and a scone. While her boss had only asked for her regular coffee order - black, no sugar, no cream, no milk, no nothing - Kara felt bad for Lena’s current predicament, and she figured a scone would help, particularly since she still had to abide by the No Pity Clause, as Kara had taken to calling it.

“Come in,” Lena answered after a moment.

Pushing the door open, Kara launched into her prepared speech. She was a terrible liar, but she had to try. “Hey Ms. Luthor, I have your coffee order, and funny story, I had asked for a scone for myself, but wouldn’t you know it, they gave me two! So I figured I’d give it to you. It’s cranberry and lemon.”

If Lena had noticed that it was a fib, she didn’t say anything to the respect; in fact, she barely said anything except a quiet ‘thank you’ once Kara deposited the cup and the paper bag with the scone inside.

At first, Kara had been planning on going in and getting out, not lingering, but seeing her boss hunched over her desk while two mountains of paperwork towered over her made her ask, “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

Lena looked up, and Kara saw that Lena’s regularly vibrant green eyes were brown, puzzlingly enough. But she would leave it as another mystery for another time. Now she had to contend with the vampirical boss who was probably working way too hard to be healthy - supernatural creature or not.

“No, Ms. Danvers, I will let you know if I need anything.”

Once the door closed behind her, Kara sagged against the steel. With a newfound resolve, Kara decided she would try to find a way to acquire blood bags for her boss. Of course, this all had to be done outside of work, lest Lena catch wind of it. She was pretty sure this would constitute as pitying, as if Lena wouldn’t have thought of every idea under the book.

But she still tried. For the next week and a half, Kara would stay up in bed into the late hours of the night, trying to search for something, getting in touch with droll hospital operators, seeking for information, but no one was willing to help Kara, because why would Kara, a regular human, be needing blood? “Just come to the hospital honey, we won’t judge you for getting hurt,” a kinder operator had suggested.

With a groan, Kara crossed off the last possibility on her list. How was she supposed to help her boss?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A smaller chapter, but we're getting our ladies settled before things begin a-changing!


	3. Command Me To Be Well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Virtual cookies to people that can guess where the chapter title [and fic title] come from~

Kara would get her answer at about 7pm on a bleary fall evening. It had been three months since Kara had been hired, and for the past couple of weeks, she didn’t see her boss at all. At first, Kara wondered if Lena was working from home, but the constant communication via the intercom system squashed that idea. Her next question was figuring out how Lena got in and out of the office without anyone seemingly seeing her do so. She tried to come in earlier - once at 7am, giving Lena a very flimsy fib that her alarm clock had fritzed out on her which caused the alarm to go off earlier - but her boss was already there.

Today, she was planning on staying later. Kara wasn’t sure why she was so determined to see her boss after so many weeks, but she supposed that she was worried about her. How long had Lena gone without any blood? What would happen to her if she ran out?

Not that she’d had any luck, but it gnawed at the back of Kara’s mind that she should be finding a solution.

The intercom crackled to life with Lena dryly asking, “What are you still doing here, Ms. Danvers?”

Fumbling to press the intercom button, Kara tried to think of a plausible excuse on the spot. “Golly! Is that the time? I hadn’t realized! Must’ve been too into my organizing here.”

Golly? Was that the best she could do? Kara pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand. She was a disaster of a liar.

Her boss clearly agreed as the awkward silence broke for her to say, “It’s a good thing I know your work ethic is better than your feeble attempts at lying.”

Kara cringed. “I’m sorry Ms. Luthor, I-”

“It’s fine, Ms. Danvers…” There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Kara frowned. Lena seemed like she was struggling to continue speaking.

“Is everything okay?” Kara hazarded to ask.

“Yes, just-”

There was a thump that was heard coming from inside the office, and Kara immediately got worried. 

“Ms. Luthor?”

Silence.

“Ms. Luthor, are you alright?”

More silence.

Taking a risk, Kara lowered her glasses and squinted her eyes towards the office. Nothing. Either this was one of the times the necklace was properly working, or the office was lined with lead. The latter wouldn’t surprise her.

Kara shook her head and stood up, making her way to the office door and knocking. “Ms. Luthor? Do you need help?”

Still quiet.

“Okay...I-uh, you haven’t answered, so I’m going in!” Kara even waited a beat to see if that would get Lena to react.

Nothing.

Turning the knob, Kara burst into the room to find that Lena was crumpled to the ground, twitching and gasping.

“Lena!” 

In her panic, she didn’t even register the more familiar name she had used. She just rushed towards her boss and immediately got onto her knees beside the other woman. She was a sight to behold. 

Her skin was whiter than her already paler complexion, and her flowing hair sprawled on the floor, but that wasn’t what drew Kara’s attention. It was the blood-red eyes and pointed fangs.

Lena, for her part, was breathing heavily through her mouth, feeling as if the air didn’t have enough oxygen for her to properly survive. Once she saw Kara, her eyes widened and she began to shake her head and vainly try to move further away.

“What do you need?” Kara asked, as if the answer wasn’t obvious.

A gasp was all she received as an answer.

“I mean, I know you need blood but-” Kara’s eyes widened as an idea popped into her head. A very bad, very risky, but probably highly successful idea. “You can drink from me!”

“N-” Lena attempted.

“Shh, come on, I’m not going to let you die,” Kara insisted, going to undo the top buttons on her own button down shirt, so she could yank the left side of her collar and expose her neck and jugular. She was glad she had her hair up in a bun at least, it meant less hassle and wrangling. 

Lena was still exceptionally reluctant, and tried to voice her reservations. “I can’t,” she managed in a breathy whisper.

Kara shook her head. “I know you said you wouldn’t, but you are clearly going through a massive blood hunger, and I’m not going to let you die here just because you are too proud.”

There was a beat where Lena was just watching Kara wide-eyed before the latter added a demure, “Ms. Luthor,” to the end as if that would make it more polite.

“But you’ll…” Lena tried, before needing to pause to take in a large gulp of air. Mustering all the strength she probably had, she said, “I don’t want to risk your life.”

“I’ll be fine, I promise,” Kara reassured. She had a plan. She would let Lena drink from her, and then she would make her way back home, remove her necklace, where she would let her powers restore her strength. Easy.

When Lena said nothing more, Kara moved forward, wrapping her arms around Lena to pull her to a semi sitting position, so she’d be able to access Kara’s neck.

Lena barely managed to rake her eyes up to meet Kara’s. “Are...are you sure?”

Kara hummed. “I am.”

Tamping down any trepidation she had, Lena opened her mouth wide and sank her fangs right in the crook of Kara’s neck.

The effect was instantaneous. Lena felt her strength returning and the breathlessness dissipating. It had been well over two centuries since Lena had drank from a human, and she had seemingly forgotten what it felt like.

Except, for all of the time that had passed since her last live feeding, Lena never remembered drinking like this to be so potent. It was almost as if Kara’s blood felt different. Kara, sweet, innocent Kara...

A gasp.

Lena immediately pulled back at the sound, eyes widening.

“Kara-” the younger woman looked very pale and she seemed like she was having trouble keeping her head upright. Shit.

“‘m fine,” Kara slurred, eyes half-lidded.

“You are most definitely not fine.” With the rush of fresh blood coursing through her veins, Lena’s mind was working overtime, as if making up for the past few weeks of her rationing. She was holding her secretary by the shoulders firmly, and she was sure if she let go, Kara would collapse to the floor. “I think you should go to the hospital.”

“An tell’em what?” Kara asked with a surprisingly brutal succinctness.

Lena knew Kara had a point. Showing up at the hospital with a vampire bite would lead to a lot of questions, and Lena would have to answer for her actions, even if Kara tried to reassure the medical team that she was a willing donor. “I don’t care. You probably need a blood transfusion.”

“No,” Kara drawled. “Please, trust me, I don’ need a hospital. I jus need to go home.”

Not feeling like arguing at that particular point, Lena acquiesced. At least for now. Maybe once some time had passed, Kara would see reason. “Fine. Then I am taking you home.”

“Don’ worry, I’ll be fine on m’own,” Kara attempted, trying to move away from Lena’s grasp. Clearly the lightheadedness from the blood-loss was taking a toll on her. 

But Lena held firm. “No way. You promised, and I intend to make sure you are well taken care of, and since a hospital is out of the question, I will be taking you home myself.”

She had no idea how she would do that if Kara somehow lost consciousness and wasn’t able to invite her into her home. She briefly considered taking Kara to her own house, but Lena shuddered. Taking Kara to a gothic mansion just outside the city right after being used for vampire sustenance ventured into so many cliche fictional vampire tropes that Lena wouldn’t dare entertain the idea. Besides, she had to make Kara feel comfortable. She was sure this experience wasn’t easy, and if she were in her own place, she’d be more comfortable.

“Now, come on, let’s get you standing.” With some difficulty, and lots of patience, Lena managed to get Kara upright. Barely. She was swaying as if she were on a precarious boat in the middle of a seastorm. “Oh screw it.”

Leaning down, she moved to pick Kara up bridal style. Kara, at the shift in her center of gravity let out a whoop at that, and began giggling. Well at least reality hadn’t set in for someone. But it did mean that Kara had lost a lot of blood for her to be so light-headed and confused, and that was worrisome for Lena.

After a brief glance to check that she could leave her office as it was, Lena managed to grab her bag with the hand under Kara’s thighs and turned off the lights with her other elbow. Closing the door with her foot - and a loopy Kara’s help - it was time to grab Kara’s stuff.

Thankfully the woman travelled light.

“Jus my jacket ‘n my bag,” Kara said, leaning outwards to grab them. She nearly toppled over, but Lena kept holding steadily. Before long, they were in the elevator making their way to the private garage that had Lena’s car. She was thankful that the elevator’s smart system could detect her presence through its AI cameras, because she literally couldn’t hold or press anything else.

The elevator ride should have been a quick affair, but Kara’s loopiness was giving way to fatigue and her comments were getting a bit looser.

“Didja know,” Kara began, her fingers twirling a stray lock of Lena’s hair. The latter was practically not breathing, too afraid to admit that the familiarity was...very pleasant. “I tried callin’  _ everyone _ . N I mean ev’ryone. Hospitals, blood drives, I-ven called this sketchy place in Gotham. No one wan’ed t’donate anythin’.”

Lena had no idea how to react. That Kara would go that far for her...it was very touching. She looked at the floor count. It had barely reached the 10th floor. She swore she would check the system to see if it was slowing things down on purpose. Artificial Intelligence or not, it was clearly being cheeky.

“N then I remmebrer: I have blood!” Kara continued, as if she were making any sense.

Thankfully, the elevator let out a ‘ding!’ at that moment, and Lena had never been more grateful to the sound.

Until the elevator said, “Have a good day, Ms. Luthor,” and Lena was sure the AI was being cheeky with her. She glowered at the area she knew the AI’s camera was, mentally promising to have a talk with her AI the next day.

As it was, she had to get the woman in her arms home.

“Y’know, you’re ver’ pretty,” Kara mumbled, and it took all of Lena to not react. She realized then that she’d been trying to not react to anything Kara did ever since she had picked the blonde up in her arms.

“Thank you,” was what Lena cordially settled on, and truly it’d be facepalm worthy, if either of her hands were free to do the gesture.

As it were, Lena now needed to figure out how to get the car door open and to get Kara seated properly.

Calling it a Herculean task would have been over-simplifying the matter.

Ten minutes later found Lena with Kara hoisted over her shoulder, finally managing to open the passenger car door after struggling with pulling out the keys from her purse.

“Y’know,” Kara mumbled from where she was dangling behind Lena. “I think you’re stronger than me.”

Lena didn’t even know how to answer that one, because of course she’d be stronger than Kara, a regular human, it was a well-known fact.

Clearing her throat, Lena said, “Alright, let’s get you in.”

Thankfully, getting Kara into the car seat was a much shorter task. By the time Lena was seated behind the wheel, she had to lean back on the rich leather backrest to center herself. This was not an easy night. 

“Now, where do you live?”

Kara swung her head around to look at Lena, head never staying fully still. “Apartment at the corner of Hope and Argo.”

Lena nodded once and drove them there. The ride was silent, though in Lena’s defense, she didn’t really know what to say.

“Didn’t know blood loss made me this loopy,” Kara dawled after a few minutes of silence. They had just turned onto Argo, and the turn had made Kara wobble from side to side in her seat.

“Yes well, it’s a common effect, it’s due to the lack of blood and therefore oxygen getting into your other organs, such as your brain,” Lena parroted, as if presenting this information like in a lecture would make it less dangerous and real thing that was actually happening to the woman beside her. She had no idea how much blood she had drank from Kara, and she cursed herself for not having kept count of how much time she had spent. She should have been more careful.

Before long, they had arrived, and Kara instructed her where to park. As Kara didn’t have her own vehicle, she had an empty parking space behind the apartment.

Getting Kara out of the car was an easier process, as the woman was a bit more steady on her feet, which meant that Lena didn’t have to pick her up bridal style again. Not that she would have minded, but she was weary of what it might look like if any curious neighbours were to peer out and see the notorious vampire carrying Kara like that.

Still, Lena took precautions, grabbing a hoodie from the back seat and slipping it on over her black dress shirt, and pulling up the hood over her head before helping Kara out. If no one knew any better, they’d have thought that Kara had had one too many and a charitable friend had taken her home. Thankfully, the lobby was empty, and they made their way to the elevator in relative silence.

“Alright, now, what floor?” Lena asked as they stepped into the elevator.

Rather than answer, Kara just jabbed the floor number herself. As the doors closed, Kara turned her head to ask, “Do I need t’invite you?”

Lena opened and closed her mouth once before she said, “Yes.”

Truth be told, Lena had never minded this aspect of her vampirism before this. People felt safer knowing that Lena couldn’t sneak into their houses, and she’d never considered herself to have many friends to have gotten invited into homes all that often. She was currently reconsidering her plan. What if Kara didn’t want to invite her? She would have a good reason for being reluctant, and Lena could barely blame her for it.

“How does the process work?” Kara asked as they stepped out of the elevator, stumbling a bit.

They rounded the corner before Lena answered, “You just need to invite me.”

“Well then, Lena Luthor, I humbly invite you into my home,” Kara said as she fished her keys out of her bag. Or at least, that’s what Lena thought she said. Between the fact that Kara had said it while half of her head was inside of her purse, and the slurring, she silently sent up a prayer to whatever deity might still take pity on her after so many centuries that she wouldn’t feel the flesh-scalding pain if she had misheard.

With the door now open, Lena stepped through, and was pleasantly surprised to see that she was able to make it through the threshold without any issues. Thankfully, it seemed that Lena was now getting the hang of Kara’s slurred speech. Once they were inside and the door was once more locked behind them, Lena led Kara to where the latter said the bedroom was.

“Now, you need rest and food,” Lena said as she let Kara lie down on the bed. “I’ll try to see if there’s anywhere that’s open for delivery while you can rest for a bit.”

Puzzlingly enough, Kara frowned. “You don’t have to stay.”

Lena’s deep-rooted confidence issues peeked out at that, and she faltered. “Oh-”

“I mean.” Realizing that she had voiced her thoughts incorrectly, Kara shook her head and paused for a moment to gather her thoughts, before she continued, “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. I’m sure you’re busy.”

“No. I absolutely refuse to leave you alone with this.” Lena decided to try her original plan again. “Honestly I’m wondering if I should really take you to the hospital-”

“No!” Kara once again interrupted, eyes widening and raising her head a bit. At Lena’s frown, she once again sought to clarify. “I don’t think any of us want to explain what happened, and I’m sure you’d hear the brunt of the accusations.”

While she knew Kara had a good point, she was also not the type of person to just let someone suffer on her account. “I wouldn’t care if I did. I think you’ve lost too much blood.”

“Hang on,” Kara said, struggling to sit up.

Lena made her way closer to the bed, hands cautiously hovering just above Kara’s shoulders, as if she wanted to reach out and touch the other woman, but held back so that she wouldn’t be seen as overly familiar. “You should stay lying down.”

Kara shook her head. “I need to show you something. Please, sit.”

Although the request was curious - and in Lena’s opinion, she was sure that whatever Kara had to show her wouldn’t change her mind - Lena did as asked, and sat down at the very edge of the bed. And by very edge, it meant that if Lena shifted her weight a bit too far one way, she would actually teeter off of the bed.

If Kara found the extreme space between them puzzling, she didn’t say anything. Instead, she reached into the still semi-open shirt, the white cotton of her left collar stained red. Lena felt a lump in her throat at the sight, but swallowed it to keep watching the other woman.

Kara pulled at a necklace chain until the pendant was visible, and Lena’s breath caught.

She knew the symbol too well. It had been plastered all over the news for the longest time, and Lena had in time developed a visceral reaction to seeing the symbol.

But this was clearly not Superman. This was not her brother’s killer. That much was clear. Was it a secret group of supporters? She felt that she was going to be sick if that was the case.

“What-” Lena began, unsure of what to say, how to ask, but knowing she had to say something.

Kara’s way of answering was to tug the necklace a bit so the clasp would give away until the chain was hanging from her hand, no longer around her neck.

However, Lena wasn’t looking at Kara’s hand or the necklace anymore. She was looking at Kara herself, and was mesmerized as the woman in front of her transformed. 

It wasn’t anything so magical or shocking, but Lena noticed how Kara’s skin regained the colour it had lost, her eyes were lively and attentive once more, and her shoulders seemed broader now, as if the necklace had been a heavy backpack that was finally removed from her shoulders.

“I’m not...human,” Kara began, removing her glasses and placing them on the nightstand along with the necklace, and Lena wondered if Kara thought she was stupid.

Bitingly, Lena retorted, “I had gathered that when your skin went from plaster white to rosy pink in a matter of seconds.”

At that, Kara cringed. “I’m sorry, I never shared this part of me. But you were getting so worried about me, and truth be told, going to the hospital would’ve also put me in a predicament.”

Yes, Lena had gathered as much. But at that moment, she was still debating on whether she should keep her anger. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that it wasn’t exactly her right to know about this. Hell, she had no idea there was another Kryptonian on Earth. 

But the thought that she had let herself hire a Kryptonian worried her, and truth be told she had no idea what Kara’s motives could be. Could she be an agent of Superman? She wanted to look Kara in the eyes as she asked this, got some answers, but without the glasses, Kara’s eyes seemed to almost glow bright blue. In fact, Kara herself seemed to have taken a more luminous appearance, and it made Lena avert her eyes.

With Lena’s silence, Kara continued. “When I had come to Earth, I was just 13 years old, and my cousin, Kal - or well, you know him as Superman - had already murdered your brother and had disappeared. The family that found me, the Danvers, had explained everything to me, and I’ve spent over 15 years just trying to assimilate. I read more books than were probably normal for a teenager, and used that knowledge plus what I had learned in Krypton, to create technology that would help me pretend to be human.”

Lena listened, although her eyes stayed steadfastly trained on her hands resting on her lap. After a moment, there was only one burning question on her mind. “Why? Why tell me?”

“Because you deserve to know,” Kara said, as if it was the most obvious thing on the planet. “You looked so worried, and I felt bad for keeping you in the dark. It was why I was so sure that you drinking from me wouldn’t do any permanent damage.”

Finally bringing herself to look at Kara, Lena noticed that the other woman was looking at her with kindness. There was no malice, and even though Lena hadn’t asked, and Kara hadn’t explicitly said anything, she knew that Kara didn’t have any ulterior motives.

But Lena hadn’t gotten to where she was by implicitly trusting everyone. So she cleared her throat and stood up, looking away. “I should order you some food and-”

“Please,” Kara said, and for some reason, her voice spoke volumes in that singular word.

Lena chanced a glance, and once again she was struck by Kara’s look.

“Stay.”

“Kryptonian or not, I wasn’t going to leave you alone. I’m not sure how Kryptonians fare against vampire bites,” Lena explained. While she had no intention of leaving, but she was going to maintain her distance.

Kara had enough grace to not try to further push the subject. 

“Would take-out be fine?” Lena asked after a beat.

“Of course. I have a pamphlet on the counter for Wong’s, he’s nearby and his food is good. And...feel free to order for yourself, I mean, I’d like for you to join me.” It was easy to talk about the mundane, as if there wasn’t a giant pink elephant with purple spots in the room.

Lena nodded once and walked out to order food. With her hearing now amplified, Kara heard as Lena ordered for the two of them, even hearing as Harold on the other end parroted the order back to Lena to confirm.

“The order will be here in 20 minutes,” Lena said as she returned. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure why she returned to the bedroom. She wanted to maintain her distance, but something kept bringing her back. Some sort of unexplained magnetism.

While Kara seemed infinitely better than how she looked when they had first arrived at the apartment, she still seemed a bit tired, and was currently leaning back against the pillows on her bed, which Kara had arranged to allow her into a semi-sitting position.

“I don’t want things to stay awkward with us,” Kara blurted out.

Lena once more made eye contact with Kara, and the intensity of her stare was powerful and compelling. “Yes, well, there’s a lot of things to unpack here.”

“Please sit,” Kara once more asked, and Lena once more agreed, perched at the very edge of the bed, as if being closer would trigger some sort of pandemonium. “Ask anything you want, I will answer with complete honesty.”

Those captivating eyes told Lena that the truth would be laid bare. “Very well, why did you apply for a job with me?”

“Because I admire you for your scientific achievements,” Kara readily supplied, keeping eye contact. “I didn’t lie about that.”

“But with a vampire? The sister of the very vampire your cousin vanquished? If I were in your position, I would have had a very different goal in mind.”

Here Kara frowned and sighed, looking down and away. After a beat, she resumed eye contact. “When Krypton, my planet, was dying, both my parents and Kal’s parents put us in separate pods, headed to the same destination. I was 13, but Kal was a baby, a newborn. The explosion from Krypton...it propelled Kal’s pod forward, but diverted my pod into the Phantom Zone.”

While Lena couldn’t see how this related with her question, she didn’t comment on that, she could tell that this was a painful topic for Kara. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to dredge up painful memories.”

“No, it’s alright, you couldn’t have known. In fact, I never told anyone else about this,” Kara said, before taking a shuddering breath to continue. “The point is, I was stuck in a place where time didn’t exist, didn’t move. It was so dark, and I stayed there for what felt like the longest time. Finally, a wayward asteroid propelled me back out of there, and when I landed, Kal was already an adult. And he had just murdered your brother a few weeks before that”

Lena’s eyes widened. Superman had been in his 30s when he ended Lex. “His pod must’ve landed in the 70s then.”

Kara nodded. “To be honest, I doubt he knows I am alive, that I made it to Earth.”

“Yes, he called himself the sole remaining survivor of Krypton to an ace reporter of the time, Lois Lane,” Lena recalled.

“Yes, well, I never bothered to try to contact him, not that I would know how to. He disappeared after your brother was murdered, and to be honest, I can’t understand how he would do such a thing, no matter who your brother was.”

Lena sniffed, breaking eye contact again to look at her fiddling hands. She understood what Kara was trying to explain to her. She hadn’t been influenced by her cousin to be some kind of secret weapon to do off Lena like he had done with Lex. Looking back up, she said, “And what would you have done?”

“With what?” Kara asked, unsure of the question.

“What would you have done if you had been in that position?” Lena explained. “To have to be faced with an ageless vampire who was trying to repopulate the vampire world?”

Kara shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t know. It’s easy for me to say I would do differently, and maybe Kal also had another plan, but maybe Lex pushed him. What I do know is that I would try to talk it out.”

“Talk?” Lena asked, disbelievingly. “You’re telling me that if I were on the verge of launching a plan to turn half of the world into vampires, you’d try to  _ talk _ to me?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I know we don’t know each other personally all that well, but from what I’ve seen of your work, and the type of person you are, I could never see you doing something like that, Ms. Luthor,” Kara said, her conviction evident.

It touched Lena. Enough that she managed to crack a smile as she said, “I think, after tonight, we can divest of the formalities. You may call me Lena.”

Whatever reaction she had been expecting, Lena hadn’t been prepared for Kara to beam, and lean forward to hold out her hand for Lena to take.

After a moment, Kara gave an encouraging nod to her own hand, gesturing for her to take it. Lena took the offered hand cautiously.

“Then you can call me Kara, but it’s only fair that you also know my real name,” Kara said. “My name is Kara Zor-El.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooh, talk about revelations!


	4. Long-Forgotten Tendrils of History

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More conversation and plot stuff!

Their food had arrived a few minutes later, and Lena insisted on paying the delivery boy herself, despite Kara’s attempts otherwise. 

Once the door closed behind her, Lena explained, “I will remind you that I bit and fed from you, so it’s only fair I foot the bill for this.”

Kara pouted from where she was sitting by the couch, a warm blanket around her shoulders. She had finally had a chance to change her clothes into something that wasn’t bloodstained, much to Lena’s relief. “Come on, I’m practically fine now!”

Lena raised an eyebrow with the precision of someone who had many lifetimes of practise as she made her way with the bag of takeout to sit across from Kara on the other side of the couch. “You are most certainly not. While I will concede that you don’t look half dead as before, as your powers are doing its job of healing you, it's not an immediate process. Ergo, I insist.”

With a huff, Kara acquiesced. As they began opening their containers, Kara said, “So what other questions do you have?”

Lena shook her head. “I’d like to extend the same courtesy to you. It’s only fair you get to ask your questions, I’m sure you have plenty. While I have lived long enough for a lot to be known about me, I’m not exactly the most open of books, so ask away.”

And Kara did. She was sure that if she hadn’t been so scientifically inclined, Kara would have been a reporter, always searching for the truth in a story. “For the past couple of weeks, did you leave your office, like at all?”

Of all the questions Lena had imagined - did you ever kill anyone, how many laws have you broken, is it true that you had broken the arm of a King, or three - she had not been expecting this. “I...somewhat. I would leave at 2am for a quick shower and a change of clothes, when I was sure there’d be absolutely no one else. Which is what I’m guessing you were attempting to find out due to your staying late, as well as the terrible fib the other day about your alarm clock fritzing out on you that caused you to arrive early?”

Kara smiled sheepishly. “Right, that. But yeah, I was. Though it’s a good thing I did. Otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed late, and wouldn’t have found you when you fell.”

Lena hummed. “I would’ve figured something out.”

“Don’t you have a back-up plan?” Kara asked, disbelievingly.

“I used to,” Lena said heavily. At Kara’s inquiring glance, Lena added, “Before you, I’d had a secretary, Jess. She was infallible, and she had a system to help me. It involves game hunt, so I’ll spare you the details. Although animals don’t satisfy me as well as humans, it would’ve at least staved off the hunger.”

Kara nodded slowly. “Why didn’t you try that before?”

Lena cleared her throat and shifted in her seat. “I...I wanted to avoid doing that. I abhor the killing of anything, human or animal, especially for me to use their blood. Animals don’t have that much tolerance for blood loss, which means they are more susceptible to becoming vampires, and as having vampiric animals would open the floodgates for a whole slew of other problems, I end up having to kill them anyway. Jess had been in charge of that.”

“What happened to her?” Kara asked, curious about her predecessor’s fate.

“She passed away a few months ago. She was very old. She had been working for me for over 60 years.”

Kara’s eyes widened. “Wow, she must’ve been really good.”

“The best, by the end, she was a close friend of mine,” Lena agreed with a fond smile. “But you are well on your way to being just as good as she was.”

At that, Kara felt a twinge of pride. “Yeah?”

“Oh yes, though I had never fed on Jess, so you do have that going for you.”

“I imagine you’ve seen a lot of your friends come and go huh?” Kara asked, swirling her chopsticks in her carton absentmindedly.

Lena sighed. “Yes, too many. It’s why I stopped trying to be social and I keep my distance. It’s easier.”

“But don’t you miss it? Having friends?”

“Of course I do, but you have to understand, after the Salem Witch Trials, the Wars, the Red Scare, everyone was petrified of vampires. They would find any reason to off us.” Lena took a big breath, as if mentally composing the rest of her explanation. “We had become pariahs to everyone, the few of us that remained. People were hunting us down one by one, and I had my own close calls and scrapes, but I had used my inventions to keep myself alive. Other vampires had had enough, and would murder those that tried. My brother meanwhile, believed that in order for us to no longer be shunned, we needed to be feared, and created his diabolical plan of world domination. With those factors, you can imagine that making friends wasn’t exactly what you’d call easy.”

Kara nodded slowly.

“Besides, the last friend I tried, it didn’t end well.” Lena left the topic at that, and she rolled her shoulders back. “Next question?”

Thinking about it for a moment, Kara shrugged. “I’m good for now. Have any for me?”

Lena pondered the offer. “I’m curious as to what led you to pursue this job. I mean, not at L-Corp specifically, you explained that, but...it’s just that, from our conversation during your interview, you seem to know your stuff on science, so I would’ve imagined you’d try to pursue a job as a scientist, rather than a secretary.”

Kara looked away and ducked her head, her hand immediately reaching up as if to fidget with her glasses until she remembered she wasn’t wearing them, and she looked back up. “Uhm, well, I can’t...or rather, I shouldn’t.”

“Why the hell not?” Lena’s question came out more harshly than she intended. Her anger, obviously, was not towards Kara, but towards whomever had told her otherwise.

But still, Kara ducked under the intense gaze. “My knowledge of science from Krypton is...light-years more advanced than a regular human’s. There are things that are being discovered now that Krypton had known way back when I was living there. I couldn’t possibly explain any of it if I were to invent these things without also outing myself as a Kryptonian. So the Danvers had decided to have me act a bit dumber. I’d purposefully answer questions wrong on tests, or forget things, just so that I would be deemed average.”

It seemed like it was taking all of Lena to not lose her temper. Her eyes were literally red, her brows were furrowed and her lips were pursed as if preventing herself from snarling.

Trying to dispel some of the anger that was bubbling within her boss, Kara said, “It’s okay, it was for my own good, to protect me.”

“No.” Lena shook her head, lips quivering in anger. “No one, particularly not a woman, should have to dumb herself down. You could claim anything! Secret genius, bibliophile and voracious reader, the opportunities are endless. You should know your worth Kara. From our small conversation, I can tell that you are exceptionally smart.”

Kara beamed at the compliment, and it seemed to help Lena to curb her anger.

“I’m sorry,” Lena began, taking a deep breath. “I’ve had to live with plenty of incompetent men throughout time that would practically get things handed to them while they knew or did nothing, and meanwhile women would work twice as hard, know infinite amounts of information, only to get the door slammed in their face, or told to learn their place. And to hear you’ve spent your life doing that...I just wish you’d have been allowed to unleash your full potential.”

“It’s okay, like I said, I knew the risks and with Kal’s legacy hanging over my head, I couldn’t risk anyone connecting the dots.”

Lena hummed. “Well, I suppose that might have been true, but now that you’re working for me I don’t want to hear another word of this ‘dumbing down’. If you know something that can help, or you have an idea, I want to hear about it, deal?”

With an enthusiastic nod, Kara agreed. “Actually, I have a few ideas in my notebook…”

“I’d love to hear them, but not tonight. My entire body is recuperating from my close call, and you need your rest,” Lena explained, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

That got Kara to pout, but she didn’t press. They finished the rest of their dinner answering each other’s questions. Lena wanted to know more about Krypton, and Kara was more than happy to regale tales from her childhood home.

Eventually, they chanced a look at a clock and noticed how late it was.

“I trust you know that there is no way you’re going in to work tomorrow?” Lena said as they finished throwing the cartons back in the bag to throw them out. Between the two of them, they had finished the entire order, without any leftovers. Truly, the only things not heading into the trash were their cups, and Kara insisted they could just leave it in the sink, and that she would worry about it tomorrow.

“Oh come on, I’m practically fine!” Kara attempted to argue.

But Lena was not having any of it. “Practically doesn’t mean you are. I forbid you from going into work tomorrow. I’ll decide tomorrow when you can come back.”

If there was one thing Kara had learnt, was that trying to argue with a centuries-old vampire was an exercise in futility. She briefly wondered how badass Lena would have been as a stone-cold lawyer. She then realized Lena was saying something. “Sorry?”

“Spacing out isn’t exactly helping your case,” Lena said with her patented eyebrow raise.

Kara smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, just been a long day.”

“I’m sure. I was just saying, if there’s nothing else I’ll be taking my leave?” Lena wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of leaving Kara by herself - a small part of her was still worried that something would happen to Kara, and she wanted to be nearby just in case - but she also didn’t want to overstep her boundaries. They had already trampled over at least six boundaries in the last three hours alone, she wasn’t keen on making things awkward, or of perhaps making Kara feel unsafe by staying.

And then, “It’s late, you shouldn’t go out.”

“I couldn’t impose,” Lena tried. “Not to mention, I’m a vampire, people are usually afraid of me, not the other way around.”

“Please. I have a spare bedroom from when Alex, my sister, stays over. It’s the least I can do,” Kara insisted.

Lena didn’t exactly put up a fight. She was tired, and she did want to stay over. For Kara’s safety of course.

* * *

When Kara woke up, it took her a moment to remember what had happened the night before.

The bite, telling Lena the truth. Their dinner together. Right.

After her blissful sleep, she felt perfectly fine. As she sat up, she ran her fingers over the area where Lena had bitten, and she felt that the skin was practically healed. As she got up and went towards her vanity mirror, she saw that to the untrained eye, Kara’s skin looked flawless. Maybe she could try to convince Lena to let her go to work.

She heard some sounds coming from the kitchen, and she smiled. Lena was still there. For some reason, the thought made her giddy.

And then she took a moment to ponder, had something changed between them? 

Probably not, Lena was an extremely reserved person, and although Kara had managed to somehow break through some of the cinderblock wall that Lena had erected around herself, she was still a riddle wrapped up in an enigma.

“Kara?” That wasn’t Lena’s voice.

“Alex?” Kara asked with a frown.

Her sister peeked her head inside the room. “Who else would it be? Come on, I brought breakfast.”

Kara’s confusion only compounded. If Alex was here, where was Lena?

To make matters worse, Alex’s wandering eyes caught sight of Kara’s bloodied shirt collar because she had left it on top of the hamper. But her sister didn’t say anything, and just went back out to the kitchen.

Following her, Kara discreetly tried to look into the second bedroom, but it was empty as far as she could see.

“Are you looking for someone?” Alex asked, and the accusatory tone did not go unnoticed.

Kara shook her head. “Nope, just looking around.”

Not letting the matter go, Alex continued, “And the two sets of glasses are?”

“One from the morning and another from last night?” Kara ventured, but she knew it was futile. 

Growing up Alex had already been insufferable, but working for the government seemed to make Alex’s nagging ability to dig at the truth even worse. “Try again.”

“I-”

“And make sure to include the bit with your bloodied shirt, don’t think I didn’t see it,” Alex added.

Kara sighed. “Alex, I don’t want to fight.”

“No, you just apparently let a vampire into your home and let her use you as food!” Alex thundered. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done?”

“She was dying, I couldn’t-” Kara began.

“Couldn’t you?” Alex’s eyes flashed furiously. “Her brother’s cronies had no problem letting dad die.”

Kara cringed. Jeremiah’s death had always been a sore subject but, “Wait, you can’t seriously...is that why you acted so weird when I said I was going to interview at L-Corp? You can’t blame her for Jeremiah’s death…”

“Oh yeah? Her brother, her _kind_ , are all monsters Kara, and I wish you could just see it! Yes, I was upset that you were going to interview there, but I tried to keep it light because I thought you would be smarter, or leave eventually. But instead, I find you practically in bed with her!”

At the last sentence, Kara blushed red. “I was not in bed with her!” she stammered.

“Metaphor, Kara, but clearly you want to, if your reaction is any indication,” Alex retorted. 

Trying to win an argument with her sister was impossible. “Still, I can handle myself Alex, and I’m still alive.”

Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes, now, but don’t you see that this won’t be a one-time deal? She’ll keep on feeding, and how long until she takes too much? How long until she finds out about your-”

It was then that Alex’s head snapped up, as she seemed to really be looking at Kara. Taking in her neck which was barely showing signs of having been used as a vampire’s feast, the fact that Kara’s necklace wasn’t there, nor her glasses, and her sister’s eyes widened as the pieces clicked together.

“No, Kara, tell me you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“She knows you’re Kal’s cousin?!” Alex thundered. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?!”

“Alex, don’t you think you’re being over-dramatic?” Kara was beginning to worry for her sister. She had no idea her sister would be so affected by this. Then again, if Alex was putting part of the onus for Jeremiah’s death on Lena, then her reaction was warranted. Except that Lena had nothing to do with it, but the other woman refused to see it.

“Oh let’s see. You, Superman’s cousin; you know, the guy that murdered Lex Luthor before fucking off to who knows where, decide to get a job at none other than at Lex’s sister’s company. As if playing with a lit match wasn’t enough, you decide to douse yourself in gasoline, as you not only let her feed on you, but you also told her the truth about who you are?? Have you never heard of using someone to get at someone else?”

When Alex put it that way, she could see why her sister was upset. “But Lena’s not like that.”

“And you know that how? You’ve known her for what, 3 months? She lost her brother that she’s had for centuries! You’re going to tell me that the secretary she’s had for less than half a year can deter the vengeance she’s probably been plotting for over a decade and a half? Please tell me you’re not that naive.”

And suddenly, Kara was wishing that she and Alex weren’t talking again. While she had missed her sister for the past 3 months that they hadn’t spoken, seeing her there, spouting all that vitriol left Kara looking a bit lost. While there surely was some logic for the way Alex was thinking, she also knew that Lena wasn’t a vengeful person.

“No, I’m not,” Kara said, squaring her shoulders. “I just know the person I’m working for. I know that Lena is a kind and hardworking person. I know that she told me when she hired me that she would absolutely not use me as a feeding bag, and only did so after I practically had to convince her to do so, because she was dying on the floor of her office. I know that Jeremiah’s death was rough. But that was on Lex Luthor, not on Lena.”

Alex raised her hands and curled them in frustration. “You are impossible. The only reason I’m here is because mom asked me to invite you for Thanksgiving, and she asked me to try to make peace, but I can’t when your crush on Lena Luthor is making you excuse her!”

“I’m not excusing anything!” Kara countered.

“So you admit you have a crush on her?”

“And if I do?” Kara wasn’t sure that admitting that was doing her any favours, but she just didn’t care. “It’s not like anything would ever come from it, but even if I didn’t, I can see people are more than just generalized assumptions.”

Alex let out a mirthless laugh. “Is that it? You want to play the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ card? She’s a vampire Kara! She’s a real life horror creature who murders people! How can you look past that?”

Kara’s fists were shaking with tension, her nostrils flared in anger. “How can you not? So, in your opinion, because she’s a vampire she’s automatically a monster?”

“Yes!”

“So then, because I’m a Kryptonian, and my cousin has murdered, does that make me one too?”

At last, Kara had managed to get Alex to falter. “No, Kara, you’re not.”

“Then why are you so quick to judge? How can you have double standards? I’m just as foreign as Lena, and I’m just as much as your typical horror creature by popular media standards. So what’s the difference?” Kara knew she had won the argument there. Alex had nothing.

But, she also knew that Alex wouldn’t concede. She’d never admit defeat. It was a fatal flaw of hers. “I can’t believe you’d say something like that. You’re nothing like her!”

“But I know her Alex, I’ve talked to her, spent time with her, and I know that she’s good. She’s not like her brother. Why don’t you come over for dinner one night, and the two of you-”

“Ha!” Alex’s shrill mocking response grated on Kara’s nerves. “No way. She might have you convinced of something, and maybe you’re resistant to her vampire bites, but my father did not die for me to be a bumbling idiot and get killed by a vampire. So you know what Kara, until you can open your eyes, I’m out of here.”

Kara watched her sister take the coffees and donuts she had brought for them in her hand and walk out the door. She distinctly heard Alex muttering down the corridor all the way until she got onto the elevator.

Little did either of them know, while they had been arguing, Lena had heard the entire ordeal from outside the apartment.

* * *

The vampire had woken up early, and decided that getting some breakfast for the two of them would be a good idea, especially since she still felt a tad guilty that she had fed on Kara so much. Thankfully, it seemed that Kara was sleeping soundly and hadn’t had any problems during the night.

Lena had ventured out early to get their food and drinks, taking the keys that Kara had left by the entrance. She had somehow managed to keep a low enough profile while she was out that she hadn’t been recognized, but then again, she was keeping her head down, hood drawn and had a pair of sunglasses covering half of her face. She had also used a pseudonym to order her drink. 

By the time she was once more making her way down the hallway to Kara’s apartment, Lena was finally feeling a lightness within her that she hadn’t felt in a really long time. And then her hearing kicked in, and she was inadvertently brought in the middle of the conversation between Kara and another woman. 

_“Her brother, her_ **_kind_** _, are all monsters Kara…”_

Lena’s gut felt like it had hit rock-bottom. She heard the two women go back and forth, and she heard Kara call the other woman Alex. This must be Kara’s sister.

She knew she shouldn’t be listening, but whether she was a glutton for punishment, or just too curious for her own good, she stayed where she was. She heard as Alex found out that she knew about Kal, and she wished she had the strength to burst in and ask Kara’s sister what exactly her problem was. She knew people hated her, but for someone that had grown up with an alien, Alex seemed particularly narrow-minded.

_“Are you trying to get yourself killed?!”_

Well, at that, she had to agree with Alex; Kara had been reckless last night, a lot of things could have gone wrong. And as thankful as she was, it was very risky, and Lena wouldn’t have forgiven herself if Kara had gotten seriously hurt.

She heard Alex argue about the time they had known each other, compared to her and Lex. And then, to hear Kara stand so steadfast by her side, so convinced of how good she was, it made a few stray drops of tears prickle her eyes. Lena had only met a handful of people that would have rushed to defend her that ardently.

_“I know that Jeremiah’s death was rough. But that was on Lex Luthor, not on Lena.”_

Jeremiah, that name was familiar...Lena would try to find out more later.

And then:

_“So you admit you have a crush on her?”_

_“And if I do? It’s not like anything would ever come from it.”_

Lena brought her hand up to her mouth to stop a gasp from getting out of her mouth. Kara was just saying that, she couldn’t possibly like Lena that way, right? Her heart fluttered at the possibility.

She listened as the argument continued. She wondered if Kara’s next door neighbours were at all aware of what was happening. And then Lena heard Kara’s counter-argument to all of Alex’s attempts to portrait Lena as a monster. She frowned; Kara had such a sweet disposition, she couldn’t imagine people thinking her alien side was anything to fear, but then again, her experiences with bigotry and prejudice were enough evidence that people were set in their ways.

_“But I know her Alex, I’ve talked to her, spent time with her, and I know that she’s good. She’s not like her brother. Why don’t you come over for dinner one night, and the two of you-”_

Hearing Alex shoot down the idea made Lena’s heart sink. But before she could process it more, she heard that Alex was leaving, and Lena rushed to hide behind the corner of the hallway to the other side of the elevator. 

She stayed hidden as Alex took the elevator, muttering about vampires and aliens and a lovesick idiot. She could only surmise that the idiot was Kara. After a few beats that she heard the elevator take Kara’s sister away, she made her way back towards Kara’s apartment.

When she unlocked the door and stepped inside, she found Kara sitting on a stool by the kitchen table, head on her arms.

“What now Alex?” Kara bemoaned, raising her head, only to do a double-take as she saw Lena. “Lena! I-”

“I heard...everything,” Lena interjected, saving them both from having Kara try to make up some excuse. She set the breakfast order on the table and sighed. “I’m sorry that I’ve driven a wedge between you and your sister.”

Kara shook her head. “It’s okay. She’s...her dad was killed by a vampire sympathizer, so to her, you represent something...evil.”

And then the pieces clicked. “Jeremiah Danvers, he was killed by Otis, Mercy Graves’ brother!”

“Oh.” Kara hadn’t made the connection at the moment, but it made sense now that she thought about it.

Kal’s murder of Lex had been a divisive moment for the world. It had opened up the floodgates as to whether Kal could still be considered a benevolent Superman, and whether he had had the right to murder someone else.

Many, like Jeremiah, believed that an evil vampire hellbent on taking over the world couldn’t be considered as someone worthy of having rights.

But, others would argue, did that give him the right to murder Lex? So many years later, the debate raged on.

At the time, Mercy Graves had traded information for forgiveness and freedom for both her and her brother, which had allowed governments around the world to dismantle any remaining cells that Lex had built, because according to her account, Lex’s plan was meant to continue even if he died.

But it would turn out that Otis had had another idea. Jeremiah had worked for the government, the same place Alex worked at today, and Otis saw them as the group that had taken Superman in and defended his actions on Lex's murder and also he believed they were responsible for corrupting his sister to abandon the cause, for he had become a fervent believer in a vampire supremacy, and he himself would try to see the plan through. And so, Otis had decided to go on a killing spree at the government offices. Jeremiah had been one of the twenty casualties before Otis had been killed in the cross-fire.

Kara was taken out of her recollection by Lena’s hand coming to rest over one of her own to draw her attention. It did the trick, she was startled, but only briefly, and thankfully not enough to have jostled Lena’s hand away. “Sorry, did you say something?”

“Yes, it’s just, I want you to know, I truly didn’t have anything to do with Lex’s plan. I heard your conviction earlier, but I just wanted to reassure you. I am who I say I am. My vampirical nature is something I try to keep under control, and I am not, under any circumstance, trying to deceive you, nor do I have any intention of taking over the world or repopulating vampires. If vampires die with me, I will be happy.”

“I believe you,” Kara murmured softly, standing up to stand in front of Lena, hands still touching. “I could tell by talking to you. I saw who you were, and I’ve seen all the good you’ve done for the world. Your philanthropic efforts, your advances to modern science and it’s all so groundbreakingly selfless.”

Lena was sure that, if she could, she’d be blushing at that moment. It was refreshing to meet someone who held such a strong belief in her. Their faces were inches from one another, and although Lena had initiated the closeness by letting her hand rest on Kara’s, this was getting a bit too close for her tastes, so she cleared her throat and removed her hand and took a step back. “Speaking of advances, you mentioned having a notebook full of ideas? I’d love to hear them.”

If Kara had been disappointed in the distance Lena put between them, she hid it with a beam as she rushed to another part of the flat in what could only be described as super-speed, bringing back more than one notebook. There were at least 5 of them from what Lena counted. She set them down on the counter and then glanced at the clock.

“I know you said I wasn’t allowed to work, but am I keeping you?”

Lena smirked and shook her head. “Not at all, a perk of being the CEO, I can work from anywhere, and today, I want to work here and listen to your ideas, if you don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Kara responded with a wide grin as she sat down and invited Lena to sit beside her as they had their breakfast and Kara opened the first notebook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this is about as much as I have written, I hope I can write tomorrow and wrap this up!
> 
> How many people were hoping for a kiss? Ahhh you'll have to wait for a bit longer~


	5. Killing Me Softly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had meant to upload this yesterday, but alas I finished this at like, 2am and I didn't have the strength to edit it.
> 
> Yet another musical chapter title reference! Can you guess it?
> 
> Anyway, some more stuff happening~

“And that’s basically all I have so far,” Kara finished, closing the final notebook.

The day had flown by, and Lena was officially impressed by the time night had fallen. Kara’s ideas were groundbreaking, and she was itching to make them a reality. But she didn’t want to seem like she was taking advantage of Kara.

“These are all amazing, Kara,” Lena commented. “And you’ve never shown anyone else any of this?”

Kara shook her head. “Nope. Not even Eliza nor Alex. I think it was better for them to not think I was one of those weird possessed children that you see in horror movies acting all crazy and muttering under their breath, writing strange symbols on a book.”

Lena hummed, grabbing a glass of water and taking a few sips. She knew all too well about how others perceived them, and it made her stomach drop to think that anyone could see Kara as any sort of weird alien, or that she had had to hide her genius in order to assimilate.

And while Kara had chuckled at her own comparison, Lena wished that Kara would see that she was worth so much more, and that her ideas could change the world.

“I’m curious, if yesterday hadn’t happened, would I have ever seen these?” Lena asked, letting her hand brush against the worn leather of one of the notebooks.

Kara’s lip bite gave Lena her answer.

Setting her glass back down, Lena made sure to look Kara in the eyes as she said, “As much as I regret having bitten you, I think that letting your ideas see the light of day is a marvelous and wonderful outcome. And I want you to promise me that when you have another idea, you’ll share it with me, deal?”

“Deal, but only if we can come up with a plan so that what happened yesterday doesn’t happen again. The whole you nearly dying part.” Kara’s leveraging was nothing to scoff at, Lena noted, impressed.

“What did you have in mind?” Lena asked.

“Well, how often do you need to feed?”

“That depends.” Lena pondered on it. “There are many factors, such as the quality of my last feeding, how much I drank, whether I’m feeling hungrier - much like cravings, there are times in which I feel like I need more.”

Kara’s mouth opened and closed a few times, as if she was trying to figure out how to exactly continue with her idea. Which gave Lena the inclination that she might not be very receptive to it.

“So,” Kara started. “What if you fed….from, well, from me?”

Lena blinked once. Twice. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Well, I heal quickly, and my blood clearly helped you, and besides, this way you don’t have to deal with Mercy Graves or anyone else.”

“Absolutely not!” Lena thundered, brows furrowing. “You barely survived yesterday!”

“Because I was trying to hide who I was! Come on Lena, if I had taken my necklace off right after, I would’ve been fine!”

But Lena shook her head. “No, I hired you to be my secretary, not my feeding source. I cannot do that to you.”

In a surprising move, Kara moved her hand to rest over Lena’s hands on the notebook. “I don’t mind. Come on, eventually, I’m sure between the two of us we can come up with a potential alternative that will allow you to feed without needing anyone’s blood, but for now, I can do it.”

“No, Kara, this isn’t right,” Lena tried, but she knew Kara had a point. She just didn’t want to become that stereotypical vampire that had a human - or in this case, a Kryptonian - for her to feed on.

“Why not? You weren’t able to find any alternatives for the past 3 months, and I didn’t have any luck either. Please let me help you; what are you worried about?”

Lena took a deep breath. She was glad Kara’s hand was still on hers, it grounded her as she tried to figure out how to voice her thoughts. To be transparent for once in her very long life. 

“You know how people are. They are bigots, narrow-minded fools. I have lived for many centuries, and I have seen how they all act. They think they have a right to judge me, to know whether my actions are warranted. Feeding from humans is one of those things. I used to do it a long time ago, I had a system, but then it became scorned and frowned upon, because prudes couldn’t understand that the feedings were necessary. They would say I was trying to convert people, control them, slowly getting them used to being vampire food. The things they convinced themselves of were never-ending. And I got tired of being judged just for trying to live. To survive.” Lena finished with a sigh.

“I can’t imagine what that must be like, to be judged over and over again for centuries, but here’s the thing Lena,” Kara gave Lena’s hand a soft squeeze. “We don’t have to tell anyone. It’ll be our secret. No one has to know about it.”

“Your sister does,” Lena reminded her.

Kara shrugged. “She knows I did it once, and besides, we’re not talking right now, so she won’t find out. So how about it? Will you at least consider it?”

Lena looked at Kara carefully. After an entire day, Kara’s nearly glowing self wasn’t as shocking to her, but it still awed her the slightest bit. She focused on the other woman’s expression. She was so purely good, so open and so willing to help her. It was...alien, for lack of a better word, for Lena to witness. “Very well, I will consider it.”

Kara beamed as she sat back, thereby removing her hand from Lena’s, and the latter wished the hand had stayed.

Eventually, Lena had to call it a day, and return to her own place. Thankfully, it was the weekend, and Lena could have a few days to herself and properly process everything that had happened. She had agreed that Kara had seemed well enough to return to work on Monday, and by the time Lena was in her car heading back to her house, she knew three things for certain.

One, Kara wasn’t like anyone else she had ever met before. Two, she was somehow already missing Kara’s near constant presence after an entire day being with her. Three, she knew without a doubt that she was irrevocably head over heels for Kara Zor-El.

* * *

When the new week began, Kara and Lena were once again following the easy routine they had built as secretary and boss, it was almost as if nothing had happened last week. Or well, at the very least, it seemed that neither of them were willing to be the one to make the first move.

Kara certainly wasn’t going to press. Lena had been inundated with work, something about a business deal in Europe, and she had let her boss be for the past few days.

She hadn’t forgotten the singular mortifying fact that Lena had heard every part of her and Alex’s argument, which meant that there was no doubt in her mind that Lena knew Kara had a crush on her.

The fact that Lena hadn’t even acknowledged it made Kara nervous. Did that mean that she didn’t feel the same way? Truth be told, Kara didn’t even know if Lena swung that way; one of the few things that Lena had still kept private was her sexuality. There had been theories galore, but much like Lena’s supposed body-count, nothing had ever been proven. 

Maybe this was a way for Lena to let Kara down easy, and she would take the hint. She probably hadn’t helped her case by offering to be Lena’s human blood donor, but she would offer no matter what. Boss or not, she liked to consider that she was perhaps becoming Lena’s friend, and she would do anything for her friends, it was just part of Kara’s personality.

But it did leave them in an awkward position, as if they were skirting around yet another fantastically coloured elephant. It was now Wednesday, and they had barely spoken more than a handful of sentences. Then again, they hadn’t had many opportunities to talk, barring a few perfunctory conversations about things Lena needed done and their morning greetings. Nonetheless, this whole not talking was making Kara antsy.

She was pulled out of her thoughts when she heard the elevator doors open, and she frowned. Lena wasn’t expecting anyone. A man in a very fancy suit stepped out, and Kara recognized him immediately from various magazine covers over the years. 

Morgan Edge. Definitely not someone that Lena would want to see.

Adjusting her glasses, Kara stood up and looked the other man right in the eye as she said, “Ms. Luthor won’t see you, Mr. Edge.”

“Watch and see how much I care about your opinion,” Edge huffed, coming to stand on the other side of Kara’s desk. “Tell Vampirella that I’m here and I want to talk to her.”

“I most definitely will not do that,” Kara insisted. She had been refusing to patch him through to talk to Lena over the phone for the past month, what made him think that a personal visit was going to be any different? Clearly the guy couldn’t take no for an answer.

Edge chuckled mirthlessly, gnawing at his bottom lip, looking around as he had an audience of yes-men with him. “Oh please, what are you, 25? I don’t know what exactly you were expecting when you took this job, but take your Twilight fantasy out of your head girl. Your little tough-chick routine really falls flat when you look about as menacing as a chihuahua. In fact, watch how it’s done.”

With that, Edge moved to go into Lena’s office, and Kara could only rush behind him, not fast enough to move in front of Edge and block the door without her powers.

Throwing the doors open, Edge boisterously called out, “She-cula! Such a long time. Tell me, do you know how business deals work? Because I think your little blood-sucking brain is missing a few liters and you’ve forgotten how things work.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Lena thundered, shooting up from her chair with such a force that the chair rolled back and thumped against the glass. 

“I’m sorry,” Kara began remorsefully. “I tried to stop him-”

“Hey, Twihard, the adults are talking,” Edge drawled, barely sparing Kara another glance, waving his hand away dismissively. “Why don’t you go fawn somewhere else.”

“Listen to me, Edge,” Lena stated, rounding her desk and walking purposefully towards the entitled man. “You want to trade insults with me, fine, let’s dance, but leave my secretary out of this!”

Edge scoffed. “At least the old hag who was there before didn’t look like she was ready to lay her life down for you. Or if she did, she was subtler. Whatever happened to her? Finally turned to dust? Or did you decide to trade for a newer model with your pitiful fan here?”

The slap that Lena gave Edge echoed around the spacious room. “I’m warning you Edge. Leave now.”

Edge clutched at his left cheek with something akin to a manic grin. “Oh am I finally getting under your skin, Nosferatu?”

“If you mean to ask whether I am finally losing my patience with your pathetic self, then yes,” Lena retorted, eyes now a deep red.

Kara was watching the exchange with a twinge of fear. Not because she feared Lena, but she was afraid that Edge might say or do something which would make Lena do something she would regret. She knew Lena was remarkably patient from what she’d seen and heard, but Edge’s taunting was grating at Kara, and the insults weren’t even aimed at her now.

“Well come on then, lay it all out, I know you’ve been dying to kill, haven’t you? How long has it been since your last feed? You must be very hungry by now.”

At that, Lena frowned. “And how would you know when my last feeding was? Unless…”

Edge had clearly overplayed his hand, which was why he was now finding himself dangling a few inches over the ground by Lena, having grabbed the front of Edge’s shirt and tie and hoisted him into the air. Even though she was a few inches shorter than him, she still managed to make the man squirm and his eyes widen as the tips of his toes were barely brushing the ground.

“Now, I’ll ask you this once. What connection do you have to Mercy Graves?”

“Who?” Edge tried, but Lena snarled, letting her pointed teeth show. “Okay! Okay! I’ll tell you, please don’t eat me.”

Lena didn’t bring her arm down, but rather just kept looking at him expectantly. After a beat, she said, “Oh I can do this all day Edge, but you can’t remain in that position all day, since you need a little something called oxygen, and I believe that this tie is on a little tight, wouldn’t you say?”

Kara made a move forward, worried about where this was going to go. But Lena used her free hand to subtly tell Kara that she had this under control. Or at least, that’s what Kara understood by the simple stop gesture.

“We’re working together with the DEO to cut off your supply!” Edge spluttered. The minute the words were out of his mouth, Lena dropped him, where the man crumbled to the ground, heaving for air.

“Interesting, tell me more,” Lena said, grabbing one of the visitor’s chairs from her desk that was closest to her and spinning it around so she could sit on it.

And Edge sang like a canary. About how he and Mercy were commiserating one lonely night at a dive bar about their problems with Lena, how Edge came up with a plan, and Mercy could use her connections to make the plan a reality. It was really quite an ingenious plan, Lena had to admit, at least to herself. She’d never let Edge have the satisfaction.

“That’s it, I swear.” Edge was near tears by the end, and Lena let out a derisive scoff at the sight.

“Your word means nothing to me Edge. It’s why I haven’t done business with your family for over 5 generations. The Edges have been trying to reach success for eons, and you’ve all failed. It’s why you’re so jealous, isn’t it? Why you want to get rid of me? You can’t stand that I, not only a vampire, but a woman, am more successful than you’ll ever be.” Lena scoffed. “You are all pathetic slimy weasels, and you can rest assured your progenies will have the same honourable distinction.” Lena pointed to the door. “And if you want to leave this office with the ability to have offspring, I suggest you leave now and never return again, nor try to contact me, am I clear?”

“Crystal,” Edge responded with an embarrassing mewl, scrambling to get out of the office and practically run to the elevator, mashing on the down button as if his life depended on it. Which, in his mind, it probably did.

Kara watched as the elevator seemed to be taking too long for Edge, that he rushed to take the emergency stairs.

“Well, I suppose he’ll enjoy running down all 60 flights of steps,” Lena said with a sigh, returning the chair to its original position and going to sit behind her desk once more. “Now Kara, would you please join me for a moment? And close the door behind you.”

Kara did as asked, going to sit on the chair that Lena had just vacated.

“Are you alright?” Lena asked after a moment. She had been staring intently at Kara before asking, before she busied herself with her paperwork once again.

“Me?” Kara asked, unsure if she’d heard Lena right.

Lena looked up and around the room. “As you are the only other person in the room, and I don’t tend to talk to myself out loud, then yes, I am asking you.”

“Y-yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Kara responded, fidgeting with her glasses.

“Because Edge has a tendency to emotionally maul people. I was too engrossed in my work to have heard him arrive, a mistake on my part that I apologize for, I would have preferred that you weren’t subjected to his bullshit, I’m sure if he took a few shots at you before he burst in here like he owned the place.”

Kara waved it off. “Oh, it was nothing, just typical posturing and demanding words.”

Lena put her pen down. “Kara, I know things have been awkward between us for the past few days, but please don’t feel you need to hide anything from me.”

“Really, he was mostly just convinced I was about as menacing as a chihuahua trying to stop him from going in. He also thought I was there because of some Twilight fantasy,” Kara said with a reassuring smile. She was touched by Lena’s worry. “But I should be asking _you_ if you’re okay. You seemed pretty angry with him, understandably so.”

Lena shrugged. “Some acting on my end, I suppose. I knew he would try to rile me up, I just didn’t think he would have actually managed to execute a relatively effective plan to try to kill me. But for the record, if you were worried I was going to kill him when I was hoisting him up, I truly wasn’t. I had things under control, and I was going to let him go if he hadn’t answered, and try another tactic.”

And Kara knew she was telling the truth. “So, what’s the plan now?”

“Plan?” Lena asked, raising her should-be-patented eyebrow. “For what?”

“Well, you found out that this blood shortage was all a ruse to try to kill you! Shouldn’t you report this?”

Lena chuckled softly. “I truly wished that I could see the world as you do, Kara.”

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t really report this to anyone. Mercy is in charge of the blood bank. Any attempt to discredit her or sully her name publicly would make me seem like I’m sore about the partnership ending, coming up with a conspiracy theory worthy of a tinfoil hat. No one would reasonably believe me, citing a myriad of reasons. And if I went to the authorities, well, they would just laugh and say ‘good riddance’. However, I have to admit that I am curious about this DEO that Edge mentioned. But I’ll leave that for another time. I actually wanted to talk to you about something else.”

“What is it?” Kara asked, sitting up straighter.

“I gave a lot of thought about your proposal….to let me feed from you. As much as I am not convinced that I should not take advantage of you, after having heard that there are at least three organizations actively trying to kill my ability to acquire blood, I am reconsidering the offer.”

Kara sighed. “Lena, you’re not taking advantage of me, I’m willingly offering.”

“And why would you do such a thing?” Lena countered. “Aren’t you worried that something could happen?”

“Of course not. I trust you with my life. Figuratively and literally in this case.”

In that moment, if the table hadn’t been in front of them, Lena was sure she would have surged forward to kiss Kara. As it were, she could only manage to blink. “I’m flattered, truly. Are you truly sure you’re okay with this?”

“Absolutely,” Kara reassured.

“Very well. But if at any point you do change your mind, please let me know. Now that that’s settled, what were you thinking in terms of compensation?”

“Comp- for what?” Kara asked, confused.

“For giving me your blood. This would probably be a bi-weekly thing, if I had to wager a timeline,” Lena explained.

Kara was flabbergasted. “Oh Rao, you think...you actually think I’d _want_ something for this? No way Lena. I’m doing this for you as a friend.”

The fact that Kara was crushing on Lena went unmentioned. “Are you sure? Because I’d be more than happy to pay-”

“No, please, let me do this for you,” Kara insisted. “Now, how will this work?”

Lena pondered for a moment. “Well, we would decide on a day and place, because I’d rather not risk another thing like last week.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Kara nodded. “How about Fridays? That way you don’t have to worry about me having to come in to work the next day? We can go to my place.”

“Perfect. So then, how about next week’s Friday?” Lena looked infinitely more relaxed now, and she had to admit that Kara did wonders for her nerves.

“It’s a date!” Kara beamed, until she realized what she said and began flushing a furious red. “I-”

And of course Lena had to wink and said, “It’s a date.”

“Right! I-I should uhm, get back to the- you know. I’m sure you’re busy.” Kara embarrassingly booked it out of the office without another glance back, nearly stumbling over the chair she had been sitting on as she left. She was hopeless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talk about awkward!
> 
> So, I hope everyone has been enjoying thus far, I've heard some wonderful comments and feedback, and I'd love to hear what everyone's thoughts are thus far. Is the pacing okay? Do the characters seem believable? Were all the vampires in popular media references too much?
> 
> Next chapter will be a bit longer because I'll be delving into the next part of things, and end the first 'arc', so to speak, of this fic. But there is more to come from this! I'll try to have the next chapter up for the end of the week!


	6. Trust Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this wound up taking a week longer than I had imagined, but in my defense, this chapter is over 7k words, so I'd like to think this makes up for it?
> 
> A lot of things happening in this chapter, I hope you enjoy it!

Lena couldn’t say she’d had many friends throughout her life. In fact, the few she’d had, she could count on one hand.

First there had been Andrea Rojas, her partner for the high society balls of the Renaissance while she’d still been living in Europe - and oftentimes her paramour during long winter nights spent in Paris. Unfortunately, their trysts hadn’t lasted long; Andrea’s father didn’t approve of the company his daughter kept, and rushed her back to Spain to get married, like a proper lady should. Unfortunately, Lena never saw Andrea after that, but they had traded long letters over the years talking about their respective lives, all the way until Andrea’s death.

Next had been Jack Spheer, her first friend after having been carted off by her mother to America on a voyage at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in order to expand the Luthor Empire in the New World. He’d been charming and adventurous, and Lena had had plenty of fun with him inside and outside the bedroom, like learning how to effectively run a business without taking anyone’s shit. Their friendship had been filled with the potential for more, though it was cut short when Jack had friended - and wronged - some people that didn’t take no for an answer without leaving permanent damge. 

Then, there had been Jess. A shy girl barely out of school when she’d first arrived at the recently established L-Corp in the late 50s, and she’d been hired as Lena’s first, and only secretary, until her death. She’d taken Jess under her wing after a lot of coaxing from the younger woman - who, to date, was the only friend she’d had that she hadn’t also slept with - and helped her grow into a strong and confident woman who would end up being such an asset to Lena that she would often be helping her figure out company matters at times, after Jess had revealed that she had an incredible knack for business deals. Jess had also managed to wriggle her way into being a trustworthy confidante, practically knowing every detail of her life, and it had been a mutual trust that they had built. Through the ups and the downs of both of their lives, no matter how small, they had had so many memorable moments. Truly, their friendship had been something Lena treasured, and missed since Jess had passed.

The latest had been Sam Arias, and that had been a strenuous and complicated relation. Well, not at first. Sam had been different in every way. From the first time they had met, they had connected. It had started over 14 years ago, when Sam had been a barista trying to fund her college education. From there, they had continued to grow as friends and sometimes reaping some benefits of intimacy.

They had the same wacky, dry and seemingly nihilist sense of humour and sarcastic tendencies. Truly, for all of the luck they’d had in their respective lives - or lack thereof, they managed to find some way to make levity of the situation by commiserating together. And for the first few years, that had been enough for them.

And then Sam had become pregnant from a one-night-stand. With that came a whole slew of emotions that led to Sam making some decisions. For one, she had decided to reconnect with her estranged mother, and Patricia Arias did not accept her daughter’s dalliances with a vampire. So much so that she had accosted Lena one day and gave her an ultimatum.

“You, or me, what will it be?”

She knew that, while Sam cared for her, Sam’s reconnection with her mother was something she cherished at having achieved, and Lena would be remiss at being the reason that Sam lost her mother again.

“How long do you think Sam will be interested in you? She needs stability, someone to help take care of the baby, and she reached out to me. Don’t you think that tells you everything you need to know?”

Sam had no idea of this internal struggle, or of her mother’s ultimatum. In fact, the silence was giving her a completely different idea of what was happening. She thought that Lena was pulling away because of the prospect of having to deal with a child, of playing house. And while Sam tried to reassure her, tell her that it would all work out, she had no idea what was actually bothering her. 

Deep down, Lena knew Patricia was right. She knew that it most definitely could never work out as Sam wanted to imagine. While at times, what Lena and Sam had was perfect and magical, it was a fairytale at best, one that could never become reality. She had already lived through so much heartbreak with her friends, to have that happen to someone she had grown to care fondly for would be too much for her.

After many attempts to amicably placate Sam, to reassure her that everything was fine as she struggled to figure out how to deal with Patricia’s impeding ultimatum, Sam had reached the boiling point and with that, imploded the stability of their relationship; Sam cut off all ties, moving away to Metropolis with her daughter in the blink of an eye, without so much as a goodbye. That had been over a decade ago. 

Despite that, Lena knew that some part of Sam still cared about her. While she had lived in National City, Sam had worked her way up to become the executive in charge of the Blood Bank, an impressive feat for someone so young. After Sam left, she had instructed her successor to keep the excess blood bags deal for Lena intact. And the system worked fine, until Mercy Graves appeared some months ago and upended everything; it had left Lena without a source for her feeding needs, and she’d been forced to ration.

In the midst of her wild search, she had finally caved and tried to contact Sam last week. She didn’t cite any details, but rather tried to reconnect in general terms, and much to her chagrin, had been left on Read. 

Until today. Her phone pinged, and to her immense surprise, she saw that Sam had responded.

With a fond smile, Lena picked up her phone and drafted a response.

* * *

“Ready?” Lena asked as she closed her office door. 

It had been a week and a half since they’d reached their agreement, and this was going to be their first time doing a planned feeding. Neither woman would admit it, but they were both equally apprehensive and looking forward to this all at once.

“Ready when you are.”

Lena turned around and saw Kara beaming at her, with her jacket and bag ready. She smirked. “Careful there, you actually seem excited to do this.”

That sobered Kara up quickly, complete with a stuttering attempt at a response, ducking of her head, her right hand immediately going to adjust her glasses. In the short time Lena had known her, she had been able to pinpoint Kara’s tells with immense ease. Granted, she was talented at being able to spot those kinds of things, having spent so much time studying humans to know just how to get what she wanted, but Kara had made it especially easy.

Deciding to spare her secretary the embarrassment, she said, “I’m just joking. Come on.”

“Good evening Ms. Luthor, Ms. Danvers. It’s a lovely evening for a night out.” The elevator, cheeky as always, greeted the two of them with what Lena could only describe as mirth. Lena knew that some part of the mechanism that served as a cognitive function was laughing at her.

With a huff, Lena jabbed the button for the garage, wanting to take the trip to unwind. The week had been tough, but there had been a few bright spots. Reconnecting with Sam had been one, the other was that Kara had taken to eating lunch with Lena in her office.

At first it had started because she needed to finish a proposal to send out to the European division, and she needed Kara to draft it up, so they ate and worked for the two days it took them. But once that was done, the lunches had continued, though they didn’t call attention to the fact, worried that doing so would cause them to end.

And now, here they were, about to go to Kara’s place so Lena could feed on her, an event which Kara had called ‘a date’. The implications were hard to miss, and the silence in the air was awkward to say the least.

“So,” Kara started, attempting to chip away at said awkwardness, “the rest of your day went okay?”

“Indeed.” Lena nodded, glancing at the elevator floor numbers flying by. “Managed to also get started on that Japanese acquisition, should have it ready for a week or so.”

Kara bit her lower lip. They were off work, why did she bring up work? “I’m sorry, I’m just trying to not make this thing awkward.”

The elevator reached its destination before Lena could respond, and the AI’s cheery “Have a wonderful evening together!” made Lena regret having come up with the system in the first place.

As they walked to Lena’s car, she found Kara chuckling.

“What’s so funny?” Lena asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You look like you want to murder your AI,” Kara explained in between peals of laughter.

Lena huffed, though a smile was also tugging at her lips. “Well, it’s not my fault that it keeps being cheeky.”

“I thought it was sweet!” Kara reasoned, going to stand next to the passenger door.

“That’s one way to put it,” Lena muttered, unlocking the car to allow them both in. “Though it’s not how I would have put it.”

“And how would you put it?” Kara asked, getting her seatbelt on as Lena did the same.

Lena started the car and simply said, “Annoying.”

“You invented it!” Kara countered, incredulous. “How can you call it annoying?”

“Have a half mind to uninvent it,” Lena mused as they got out of the parking garage.

They continued to debate the ins and outs of AI systems, with Kara suggesting some things based on the AIs she’d known on Krypton, but eventually, they fell once more into silence.

This time, Lena broke the silence by rounding back to an earlier topic. “While we were in the elevator, what did you mean when you said you didn’t want things to be awkward?”

“Ah,” Kara breathed. “It’s just...things have been a bit weird between us since the bite the other week. It seems like we don’t really talk if it’s not work or perfunctory things like ‘hey’ or ‘how’s it going’.”

“We do talk-” Lena began, until she paused and realized Kara had a point. She sighed. “I suppose it’s my fault.”

Kara was surprised, to say the least. Was she going to admit that she didn’t have feelings for Kara? 

“I’m a bit rusty at the whole friends thing,” Lena began. “Like I had told you the other week, after my last friendship....ended, and Jess passed away, I had told myself that I would keep to myself. Business only and all that. But you...you have been such a welcome surprise, one I would have never imagined in my wildest dreams, particularly considering our... familial connections. And I suppose I’m a bit weary of losing that. Losing you, I mean.”

While it had not been what Kara had been expecting as an answer, she knew the truth behind the words rang true. “I can relate. I was worried I might have driven you back with my insistence at being your feeding source.”

Lena cracked a smile at that. “Oh believe me, it would take a lot more than that to drive me away.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Kara agreed, lightly bumping her shoulder with Lena’s, leading the two women to chuckle. After a beat, Kara added, “It’s nice to be able to be myself around someone else for a change.”

They had arrived at Kara’s place, and as Lena parked, she said, “I agree, though I imagine hiding alien superpowers since you were a teenager is a lot more difficult than being an ageless vampire. I never cared much for what others thought of me, so I would just let the stories grow and all sorts of wild tales would be formed, and I never had to hide.”

Getting out of the car, Kara said, “Yeah, my sister was mortified the first few weeks when I would crush or break the padlocks to my lockers at school.”

Lena looked impressed as they made their way to the building. “So, you have all of your cousin’s powers?”

“I guess so? I don’t know whether I have _all_ of Kal’s powers, mainly because I never really found out what powers he did have, other than the obvious ones the whole world knows of. Plus, I try to keep my powers hidden, so I’m a bit rusty on some, or straight up never tried it on the others.”

The silence returned when they got to the elevator again, and persisted until Kara reached the door to her flat. “Do I need to invite you again?”

Lena shook her head. “No, if you haven’t uninvited me, the invitation from the other day still stands. If you ever do want to rescind it, you just need to say it.”

Kara nodded, unlocking the door and beckoning Lena to come in. “Well, don’t worry, that won’t be happening.”

With a soft smile, Lena followed after her secretary. Silently, she was hoping that Kara’s words were true. She knew all too well that time had a way of making assurances die. She wanted Kara to be different.

Once they were inside, they stood awkwardly by Kara’s kitchen table after having deposited their bags and jackets by the doorway.

“So,” they both began at the same time, before laughing.

Lena recuperated first. “I don’t want to force you. If you prefer, we can eat first?”

Kara smiled. “Yeah, that might be good. Takeout?”

“I’d like that,” Lena agreed, going to sit on the nearest stool as Kara went to grab the phone. “Though I am going to pay for it.”

“What?” Kara paused, phone in hand, whipping around to face her boss. “No way! You paid last time!”

“If you insist on not letting me pay you for me feeding from you, the least I can do is pay for the food we eat,” Lena explained, her tone brooking no room for argument.

There was a moment where it looked like Kara was going to attempt the impossible and try to keep arguing with Lena, but wisely curbed it once she saw Lena’s infamous raised eyebrow practically challenging her.

So Kara just let her mouth close and silently dialed the number, bringing the takeout pamphlet with her to stand beside Lena so they could choose the food.

For a moment, Lena wondered if she had upset Kara; when she looked towards the other woman, she found Kara looking back at her. And the smile Kara gave her assuaged her of all her fears.

Dinner wound up being marvelous, talk finally flowing freely after what seemed like eons of uneasy conversations. Kara spoke of Krypton, and Lena regaled some tales from her long and illustrious life.

Eventually, it was time for the feeding, and it was as if the elephant was back and had sat down smack in the middle of the sofa they had migrated to.

“Kara,” Lena began, looking at her secretary in the eye, “if you’re having second thoughts, please just tell me, okay?”

“I’m not, I promise. I just- I’m not really sure how to do this,” Kara explained with a sheepish smile. “Do you just come here and drink from me and that’s it?”

“Well, that’s the gist of it, what more would there be?” Lena asked.

Kara shrugged. “You’re the expert here.”

Lena hummed. “Generally what you said does encompass it. So, shall we?”

“Actually,” Kara began, standing up. “I was wondering if I might get changed?”

At those words, Lena’s mind went to a dozen places, and absolutely none of them were appropriate. “What?” she blurted.

Kara grabbed at her cardigan and pinched part of the fabric between her thumb and forefinger. “I’d want to avoid having to clean more of my clothes from bloodstains, so I was figuring I might just grab an old tank top?”

“Oh,” Lena said, swallowing the lump in her throat as she brought her mind out of the less innocent thoughts that had crossed at Kara’s suggestion of changing. “Certainly.”

When Kara did return, Lena did a double-take. Sure, she knew Kara was attractive, she’d have to be stupid to not see it, but seeing her toned and bare arms brought a whole new level of attractiveness to the young woman.

Deciding to not give in to her impulses and do something she might regret, Lena merely smiled and asked, “Ready?”

“Yep.” Kara sat down on the sofa, her hands coming to rest on her knees. 

Lena noticed that thankfully, Kara’s hands weren’t gripping her knees with a vice grip, as an attempt to assuage her nerves. No, instead, her fingers were gently and languidly tapping her knees, the very image of calm. But she still felt compelled to ask, “No second thoughts?”

Kara chuckled then, sparing Lena a glance. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say _you_ were the one having second thoughts.”

“No, I just don’t want you to feel pressured.” Lena paused for a moment before she added, “It’s not uncommon for employers to ask things of their workers, things they might not be comfortable with, but still partake in because they’re afraid of the consequences should they not do it. And I don’t want you to feel compelled to help me with this. I won’t think less of you for it.”

Reaching out a tentative hand, Kara leaned forward to grasp one of Lena’s hands in her own, and looked her in the eyes as she said, “I promise you, I’m doing this because I want to. I don’t feel forced. I want to help. Besides, this is probably the least risky way you have of feeding, knowing my healing factor.”

And Lena knew that it was the truth. She nodded and cleared her throat. “Right then.”

She got up from her spot, and tried to figure out the best position to do this from. She wanted to do this in the same spot that she had first bitten Kara, in order to not keep marring her skin with bites. So she went to sit by Kara’s left side, only to realize that she’d need to angle her head really awkwardly to do this. And the other side was out of the question as she would have to reach across Kara’s entire body to do it, not to mention the awkward angle would still be a problem.

Seemingly sensing the problem, Kara offered, “Why don’t we just do it like last time?”

Lena made a face. “On the floor? I’d rather that this time be a bit more comfortable.”

Kara hummed as she thought. “Oh! I know, why don’t you just sit on my lap?”

At that moment, Lena was sure that she had heard wrong. Maybe her bloodlust was getting to her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

To accentuate her point, Kara tapped her hands on her lap. “Sit here, that way you can reach the area easily with a better vantage point.”

Vantage points were the last thing in Lena’s mind.

“Come on, just try and if not we can see about another way.”

With a barely audible sigh, Lena moved and straddled Kara’s legs, her hands going to rest on Kara’s shoulders. Kara’s hands meanwhile, went towards Lena’s hips, and Lena felt her breath hitch.

They were so close to one another. If Lena leaned forward just a smidge, she’d be able to kiss Kara, and she was very, _very_ tempted to do so. 

Clearing her throat, Kara asked, “Does this work?”

“Oh... yes this should be fine,” Lena mumbled, lips parted slightly as she tried to wrap her head around their position and their proximity. She let out a breath, and rather than go for the bite, she just kept looking at Kara.

Kara ducked under her gaze, once more adjusting her glasses.

With a small laugh, Lena reached for Kara’s glasses with both of her hands, and gently pulled them from her face.

Although confused, Kara smiled as she asked, “I’m curious to know what my glasses have to do with anything?”

“Did you know,” Lena began, folding the glasses and placing them on the coffee table behind her before going back to looking at Kara right in the eye, “That whenever you get nervous, you have a tic that leads you to adjust your glasses?”

“I- uhm,” Kara stammered, conscious and very aware of Lena’s piercing gaze, knowing that now she didn’t have her glasses to fidget with, as Lena so rightly pointed out.

Lena brought her hand up to the nape of Kara’s neck. “Are you nervous, Kara Zor-El?”

Hearing Lena say her real name did things to Kara’s entire body that really made her want to bridge the gap between them with her lips. “N-no,” she managed to let out.

“Good. Ready?”

By now, Kara wouldn’t be able to tell you what she was supposedly ready for, she just nodded dumbly.

She felt Lena’s hands caress her shoulders as they made their way to rest by her biceps, she saw as Lena’s face neared hers, and she held her breath. Were they going to-?

No, Lena ducked her head to the side, to approach the crook of Kara’s neck, where two almost imperceptible bite marks rested. Kara was sure her hands were clamming up on Lena’s pants, but she didn’t - couldn’t - move. She was rooted to the couch, barely remembering to breathe again as Lena’s lips ghosted over the skin on her neck.

This was nothing like the other feeding. That one had been driven by a purpose, a need to keep Lena alive, and the urgency had forgone all of the care and intimacy that were now prevalent.

When Lena’s fangs did pierce Kara’s skin, the latter let out a soft hiss, and began to count out loud. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi…”

It was Lena’s condition to do this. She wanted to make sure there would be no chance to go over and take more blood than she absolutely needed, so she made Kara promise that she would keep a careful count. 

“Seven Mississippi,” Kara finished with a gentle tap to Lena’s thigh, and the latter immediately backed away.

Both women were panting heavily, and Kara could only stare at the other woman, with some of Kara’s blood still sticking to Lena’s fangs, glistening in the light through her open mouth as she heaved gulps of air. She looked beautiful, if Kara had to be honest.

Meanwhile, Lena tugged on Kara’s necklace to loosen the clasp, so Kara could begin healing. In that moment, Kara looked gorgeous, with her flushed cheeks and her eyes taking on an almost luminous quality to them as her powers flowed through her body.

If only both women knew how much they would love to kiss each other right in that moment, no matter the blood and fangs. 

But, it wasn’t to be quite yet. 

Lena cleared her throat and stood up, excusing herself to go to the bathroom and clean herself up.

Kara meanwhile headed to the kitchen to grab a paper towel and used some stray drops from the faucet to wet the paper in order to dab at the skin and remove any remaining flecks of blood.

Once Lena had finished, Kara asked her if she wanted to stay.

“Well-” Lena was at a loss. She was sure that if she stayed, she’d give in and kiss Kara. Was she really willing to risk it? She knew that Kara supposedly had a crush on her, but she was still worried that it might have been an in-the-heat-of-the-moment thing she said to her sister to try and stump her, rather than something Kara actually felt. And she was not going to lose another friend. “No, I couldn’t intrude. I need to get some paperwork done, and I’m sure you’d like to enjoy your weekend resting.”

“Oh.” 

Kara’s frown was almost imperceptible, but Lena noticed. And the pout too. Gods, Lena wanted nothing more than to close the gap between them with a kiss. No, it was just the rush of blood talking. She tended to get a bit more impulsive and rash when she’d just fed.

“So, see you Monday?” Kara asked as they headed to the door.

“Of course,” Lena answered, gathering her stuff. Once she was ready, she came to stand in front of Kara, the latter with her hand on the door, ready to open it for her. “I did want to say something.”

Kara’s eyes seemed to glow slightly brighter at that as she silently beckoned her to continue.

“I know many people wouldn’t even dare to allow themselves to be in the situation you were. And I know that you have a...different physiology that gives you an advantage, but it makes me happy to know that you’re there, and that you are willing to go through this for me. So, thank you. For trusting me, I mean. It means the world to me.”

“Of course!” Kara beamed, smile radiant. “You can always count on me, Lena.”

And she had no doubt about it.

* * *

It’d be on Monday, during their lunch, that they would get to talk again, and Lena posed an interesting question.

“If I recall correctly, your sister had invited you for Thanksgiving, right?”

Kara nodded, taking a bite out of her meal. “Yeah, but I turned it down. I know Alex, and I know she won’t let this go, and the last thing I want to do is to cause Eliza, our mom, any grief.”

Lena nodded and hummed. “That makes sense. Which leads to my next question - I know that next week we would have our feeding date, but as it’s also Thanksgiving, I was wondering if you might want to come and stay the long weekend with me? I have a place just outside the city. It’s quiet and we can just leave the city behind.”

“I would love to!” Kara responded enthusiastically. She didn’t mention the fact that Lena had called it a date. “When would we leave?”

“I was thinking Wednesday night? We could leave work, we could go to your place to grab whatever you might want to bring, and then I could drive us there.” Lena was getting excited from Kara’s enthusiasm. 

Maybe, just maybe, Lena could tell Kara how she felt. And maybe, Kara would feel the same way.

* * *

When the Wednesday before Thanksgiving came around, Kara could barely contain her excitement. She hoped that this meant that, sometime during this getaway, she’d be able to come clean about her feelings, and tell Lena how she felt directly to her.

The thought tied her stomach in knots, but it didn’t deter her.

“Hey Kara,” Lena said, coming out of her office. It was mid-afternoon, and Kara was surprised to see that her boss had physically come over to talk to her, rather than using the intercom. “The Japan deal is happening tonight, so I’m going to have to move our schedule a bit. Is it alright if I pick you up tomorrow morning?”

Kara nodded. “Sure thing! What time?”

“Nine? That gives us good time to get out onto the highway and we can be at my place within the hour.”

“Perfect, I’ll be ready.”

Lena seemed like she wanted to say something else, and in the end, settled with, “I’m sorry to have to change plans last minute, but this is one of those ‘now or never’ and I can’t turn it down.”

Kara understood, and said as much. “I don’t mind Lena, I know how important this is.”

With a grateful smile, Lena went back into her office, getting ready for a late night conference with her future partners in Japan.

Meanwhile, Kara wrapped up everything that she needed to, fully intending to not have to worry about any kind of work until she had to come back to the office next week. When it was time for her to leave, she quickly checked with Lena to make sure she didn’t have anything pressing remaining.

“No, thank you Kara. I’ll see you tomorrow?” Lena said with a small soft smile.

Kara beamed. “9am sharp! I’ll be ready.”

* * *

And by 8:30am the next day, Kara was ready to go. She had checked to make sure she had everything she would need, and was anxiously waiting for Lena to arrive. She had her suitcase - a backpack really - ready by the door, and totally wasn’t nervously pacing the apartment in anticipation.

To her surprise, there was a knock on her door. Kara went to answer it, excitement radiating from her, figuring Lena was just as enthusiastic to leave as she was.

Except that, when she opened the door, she found her sister, as well as three other people she had never met before.

“Alex? What are you doing here?” Kara asked, immediately frowning.

Alex looked a bit uncomfortable as she asked, “Can we come in, Kara?”

“Not until you tell me what this is about, and who these people are,” Kara responded, looking at the other visitors in turn. There was another woman, and two men, one who looked just as uncomfortable as Alex to be there, carrying a variety of equipment in suitcases.

The other man, with a deep voice, said, “Ms. Danvers, my name is Hank Henshaw, I’m your sister’s superior. As for why we’re here, this concerns Lena Luthor, and it’s imperative we speak to you, away from prying ears. May we come in?”

“Please Kara. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important,” Alex tried again.

And maybe it was because Kara trusted her sister, but she let the four people inside with a wave of her hand. Once the door was closed, Kara asked, “What’s this about Lena?”

Hank Henshaw came to stand in the middle of the room in a typical military posture, legs planted firmly, hands clasped behind his back. “How much do you know about Lena Luthor?”

Kara frowned. “I know she’s a vampire-”

“And Samantha Arias?”

“Who?”

Henshaw looked towards the other man. “Schott, set up the projector.”

Schott did as he was asked with a small yelp, scrambling to get set up at the dining table she rarely used.

Kara looked at the third woman, who was standing by the door, as if she was ready for an intruder to come in, hand on her holster. What the hell was Alex involved in?

“Kara,” Alex began, approaching her with apprehension, as if Kara was some cornered wild animal. “There’s some things that we found out about Lena… she’s using you.”

“What? That’s not true,” Kara automatically responded.

“It is,” Henshaw interjected. “Ms. Luthor has always used top-notch encryption in her communications, which make it impossible for us to track her or monitor her correspondence, however, the same can’t be said for Ms. Arias. We recently discovered a line of communication between them, and with Schott’s help, we were able to discover the subject of this conversation: you.”

“Me? Wha-”

Alex added, “We know that you’ve been letting Lena feed from you, Kara.”

Schott took that moment to exclaim, “Ready to go!”

With a projector set up to present his screen across the wall by her door, Kara watched as a screenshot of the beginning of a text conversation showed up, and began reading.

Lena  
  
Dear Sam.  
I know it has been a while since we’ve spoken, but I recently got to thinking about you and wanted to try to reconnect.  
I hope things have been well.  
Lena  
  
Lena! Wow, it’s been a minute huh? Funny enough, I was just thinking about you. I’ve been good! Sorry that it took me some time to respond, things have been crazy busy with my company, in a good way! How are you?  
  


Kara huffed. “This is the big thing you want to show me? This is just Lena reconnecting with an old friend!”

Henshaw rolled his shoulders. “It appears that way, doesn’t it? Schott, fast-forward a bit.”

It was then that Kara realized that this was a real-time view of Sam’s phone as Schott scrolled down a bit more. She began reading again.

Lena  
  
Damn, completely locked out of the NCBB? What did you do?  
  
I actually found someone. She was willing to help me, I was practically dying in her arms when she saved me and let me feed from her. Granted she almost died because of that, but it all ended well.  
  
OMG LENA. Hollywood movie much? When’s the wedding?  
  
Funny. It’s not like that, we’re just colleagues.  
  
That’s what they all say.  
  
It’s true! Actually, she’s my new secretary...I'm not sure whether you had heard, but Jess passed away some months ago.  
  
No! Aww man, she was the best!

Kara was beginning to lose her patience, never mind the fact that a part of her was crushed that Lena dismissed them as just colleagues. “Again, perfectly harmless!”

“It might seem that way to you, but we are showing this to you for a reason, Ms. Danvers.” With another nod, Henshaw instructed Schott to continue scrolling. “This is the part we want you to read.”

Lena  
  
That’s why I had originally reached out, I had been hoping you could help me with my lack of resources for feeding, but as you can imagine, I got it covered with Kara.  
  
Kara huh? That’s your human sacrifice’s name?  
  
Don’t call her that!  
  
What, you’re the one who’s telling me that you’re feeding from her, and that there’s nothing going on between you two, so human sacrifice.  
  
You are incorrigible  
  
You know it. Planning on making her yours?  
  
And if I was?  
  
Got the sacrificial altar ready?  
  
Yes, and the ceremonial dagger. The robe will be a bit of an issue. It got ruined from the last attempt, and finding a new one has been impossible.  
  
You could always do it nude?  
  
Hilarious  
  
But yes, I am planning on taking her out of town later this week, to the mansion.  
  
Nice, if a bit cliche. With the added benefit that no one will hear her scream…  
  
Sam!

“This could just be a joke! There could be a million reasons for this.” Kara rounded off on her sister. “Please don’t tell me that you all came here because you snooped on a private conversation and assumed that they were being serious.”

Alex was stumped as to how to respond to her sister, clearly having thought that Kara would see reason after those texts.

Henshaw bristled. “I would have imagined you might want to appreciate that your sister cares enough to bring this to you. I’m not sure how much you know about Ms. Luthor’s past, but you cannot trust her.”

“Because she’s a vampire?” Henshaw might be taller than her, but she wasn’t going to be intimidated by him, approaching him with a glare. “I trust Lena.”

“Your trust for her is misplaced,” Henshaw responded, matching her posturing. “Make no mistake, you are a tool to her. A means to an end, or whatever you want to call it. She might be joking in those texts, but come on, the altar? The knife? That doesn’t raise any alarm bells? She might be actually planning something. Are you really willing to stake your life for someone you’ve only known for a few months?”

Alex piped up, “Please Kara. Vampires are wired differently. How can you be so sure that she’s not serious about this altar?”

“Because if she was, why didn’t she do it last time? Or after the first feeding?” Kara countered.

“You know,” the third woman piped up. “Research shows that willing victims always yielded more potent blood.”

“Vasquez is right,” Henshaw said. “It could be something she’s using to gain your trust. Have a few normal outings and then next thing you know, you’re sacrificial offering.”

There was a notification sound that made everyone look at the projection of Sam’s phone. Sam had responded.

Lena  
  
Please, don’t play the innocent indignant card, it doesn’t become you. I know you Lena, I’ve seen you in action. That girl will be putty in your hands.

“You were saying?” Henshaw added. “Are you still certain you know her?”

“Yes,” Kara said, steeling her resolve.

“Oh, she’s responding,” Schott said, seeing the ellipsis show up.

Lena  
  


They waited with baited breath.

Lena  
  
We shall see. I’ve just pulled up to her place, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Reading those words, Henshaw stiffened. “Agent Danvers, head to the hallway and find a good hiding place to watch the elevator. Inform me the minute she steps out of those doors. Once she’s here, head downstairs and wait for my instructions.”

Alex nodded, and with a final look at Kara, left the apartment.

“Now,” Henshaw began. “Schott, pack it up. Vasquez, escort Ms. Danvers to her room. No one is to leave that room until I give the all-clear.”

“Wait, what?” Kara said. “I didn’t agree to anything. I’m going with Lena.”

“Ms. Danvers, trust me, you will thank me for this.” 

Before Kara could say anything, Vasquez had a vice hold on her arm and was dragging her to her bedroom. Without her powers, Kara didn’t have any footing to stop her from getting pulled. Schott brought up the rear, the myriad of equipment making an efficient fence stopping Kara from finding some way to break free.

“What’s he going to do?” Kara asked, growing worried. She surmised that no one knew about her powers, and she wasn’t too keen on making that known around them, so she watched with apprehension as Vasquez checked her gun clip.

“Protect you,” Vasquez explained succinctly. Clearly she was a woman of few words.

On the other side of the flat, Henshaw checked his surroundings before he pressed some buttons on something on his wrist, changing his appearance. 

A knock on the door, and Henshaw opened the door.

“Hey Kara, are you ready?” Lena asked, a smile on her face.

“Actually, I was thinking,” Henshaw began. “I changed my mind. I think I might just go with my sister.”

Lena frowned. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I changed my mind,” Henshaw repeated.

“I don’t follow, yesterday night you were all ready to go with me, but today you’re not? Did your sister say something?”

“And if she did?” Henshaw shot back, crossing his arms. “What’s it to you?”

“Kara…what is going on?”

In Henshaw’s opinion, he had to give the vampire credit for her acting chops. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said that she was genuinely heartbroken. But he did know. And he was here on a mission. Edge had told him everything, and he would be the one to eradicate the vampire plague, one way or another.

“I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Lena countered, seeming like she wanted to walk into the apartment. “Why don’t we sit down, and talk?”

“No, in fact, I rescind my invitation. You are no longer welcome inside.”

That verbal blow seemed like it genuinely hurt, as Lena looked at the door frame as if it would do something to her. She took a cautious step back, hands up placatingly.

Henshaw decided to continue. “Let me make something clear to you. I don’t know what your plan was, but Alex told me everything, such as the fact that I shouldn’t trust you, and I believe her. So, consider this my resignation, both as your secretary and as your human sacrifice.”

There was a flash of something behind Lena’s eyes as she seemed to regard Kara in a new light. “Is that so?”

“Yes.”

Meanwhile, the real Kara racked her brain to think of what she could do to get out of this. She could hear Lena faintly from the door, and what sounded like her voice too. She had to somehow stop this. Subtly, she pulled at her necklace to loosen it from her neck, and she adjusted her glasses so she could see through the wall to where the door was.

Lena nodded slowly. “I’m surprised you’re so calm about all of this. I’m a fearsome vampire right? Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill you?”

Henshaw huffed. “Of course I’m nervous. You are literally standing there on the other side of the door asking me if I’m afraid of you killing me. I’m petrified.”

With a mirthless chuckle, Lena let her fangs show. “You see, I don’t believe you.”

She began to advance closer to the door, and Henshaw backed away. “Stop, you aren’t invited.”

Lena paused, adopting a look of worry. “I’d have thought that’s what you wanted, since you uninvited me: for me to try to walk through that door and be subjected to an unbearable pain, isn’t that it? Then again, you’re not Kara Danvers, are you?”

Kara had heard enough and whipped her glasses off, stuffing them and her necklace into her jeans pocket. Moving fast, she grabbed one of Schott’s equipment cases with one hand and swung, smacking it over Vasquez’s head, knocking her unconscious.

Schott yelped. “How are you doing that? That thing is so heavy!”

She debated hitting him also with the case, but decided that she might break something, namely him, because while Vasquez looked tough, Schott looked like he had never seen action a day in his life. Instead, she used her free hand to make a fist and punched him, getting Schott to also drop unconscious. Crude, but effective.

Bursting out of her room, case still in hand, she saw Lena and herself? They had both stopped talking at the commotion, and were currently staring at her in alarm.

“What the...step away from her!” Kara thundered, making her way to the doorway.

Thinking fast, she threw the equipment case as hard as she could towards Henshaw.

He barely managed to shield his face from the impact, but it still knocked him back and over towards the floor. Clearly, he was built of stronger stuff, and thus was still conscious, if his groan of frustration was any indication. 

But Kara had no plan to wait and find out. She barely managed to grab her own luggage that she had prepared, and ran to the doorway where Lena was standing, dumbfounded.

“Come on, we have to go now!” Kara urged, taking one of Lena’s hands and urging her down the hallway.

They passed the elevator by a wide margin, and Lena frowned as they kept going. “Where are we going?”

“Alex is waiting downstairs, we can’t go that way.”

At the end of the other side of the hall, there was a window with a fire escape ladder. Pushing the window open, she climbed up and helped Lena do the same before closing the window again.

“There they are!”

It was then that they saw that Henshaw hadn’t just come with a skeleton crew. There was a small platoon of heavily armed soldiers in the alleyway below them, aiming their weapons at Kara and Lena, having spotted them on the fire escape.

“Nowhere to go but up,” Kara murmured, urging Lena to go first.

Lena faltered for a second, before the first shot ricocheted against the railing.

“I can deflect the bullets, let’s go!” Kara insisted, and Lena didn’t need to be told twice.

They heard some of the soldiers trying to wrench the bottom stair loose, probably figuring that they could climb up and corner them on the roof.

And truly, Lena was at a loss, how were they going to escape this?

As she climbed the two sets of stairs, she tried to make sense of the day. She had approached Kara’s door that morning with a sense of elation, ready for a long weekend that hopefully promised something more. At first, she had been fooled by the fake Kara, until she had paused for a second and realized all the ways that that wasn’t Kara. From the way she acted to the very words, she had her suspicions confirmed when she saw Kara burst out of her room and practically deck the impostor with an equipment briefcase. 

And now? She was climbing onto the roof of a building, with no way to escape. A small part of her wondered if Kara truly was a plant. Could this be part of a larger scheme to do away with her? Could she truly have been fooled so expertly?

Once she was safely in the middle of the roof, she finally allowed herself to turn around, and saw Kara right behind her, her cardigan absolutely shredded, littered with bullet holes.

“I need you to trust me,” Kara said, looking Lena right in the eye.

“I do.” And she did, she trusted Kara with her life.

Before she could react, Kara picked Lena up, bridal style, her luggage now hosted onto her shoulder like a backpack.

“Have you ever flown before?” Kara asked as they approached the ledge on the other side.

“Nope,” Lena said, getting an idea of what was about to happen.

“Me neither,” Kara said, as she jumped off the ledge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a great idea, huh? Just yeet yourself and your crush off the building without knowing how to fly.
> 
> Also, I tried something different with the text messages, I hope they came out okay! Also, part of the messages that Henshaw and co. conveniently left out were some apologies, but we'll get to that later.
> 
> I'm going to try to update some of my other fics before circling back to this one, but I'm hoping to get to this once again before the end of the month!
> 
> I'd love to know your thoughts!


	7. Sanctuary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! Took a little longer than a month, but here we go!
> 
> Lots of plot, some insight into what's happening on the DEO side, but not to worry, we get some time with our ladies.
> 
> Enjoy!

Alex rubbed her temple with the tips of her fingers as she rode the elevator downstairs, a vain attempt to quell the incoming headache. A part of her wondered if she should have stayed with her sister. Kara’s expression when she left was one of pure betrayal.

And honestly, Alex couldn’t fault her. 

If the entire scene at the apartment hadn’t been enough, Kara now knew that Alex had been lying about her work this entire time; it hurt her to have to do it, but top secret government factions were on a need to know basis, and Kara obviously didn’t need to know. And while her sister might not see it that way, it was a good thing that she wasn’t in the know. To the wrong people, Kara herself might be considered a person of interest to the DEO, and Alex would never allow that to happen.

She tried to shove her guilt to a dark corner of her mind, reminding herself of the mission: to apprehend Lena Luthor, the vampire who had been heading to Kara’s apartment moments before Alex had discreetly slipped into the elevator she was in now, as per Henshaw’s orders.

Once the doors opened to the lobby, Alex stepped out and sighed. She had a sinking feeling that, in her pursuit of justice, a threshold had been crossed. The question was: had it been worth it?

On one hand, she knew it was likely Kara would never forgive her for this, but on the other, she had spent way too many years - probably more than was healthy - studying and analyzing vampire patterns. Unbeknownst to anyone else in the Danvers family, Alex had been planning on joining the DEO for a long time.

It had all started the day after her high school graduation. Alex had been missing her father something fierce, and she had been in dire need of a drink. She knew that between her mom and Kara, they wouldn’t let her go anywhere to get super drunk, so she snuck away and went to have her drink in peace. She had overheard some of the other kids mention this old dive bar that wouldn’t check for ID to serve alcohol, and decided to head there.

“Aren’t you a little young to be drowning your sorrows in alcohol?” 

While the bartender had been no problem to deal with, the man who she would later find out was Hank Henshaw was another story.

“Aren’t you supposed to be minding your own business?” Alex had snarked back, already a few drinks in, so all the fucks she could possibly give had already checked out for the day.

“Perhaps, but I wanted to talk to you, Alex.” The use of her name got her to pay attention, as Henshaw had expected. He sat down on the stool beside her and continued, “I imagine you want to be left alone, so I’ll leave you with my card, and an address. Meet me there tomorrow at 1pm, I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say.”

Alex had taken the card with trepidation. “Respectfully, who the fuck are you?”

“Hank Henshaw, I had worked with your father. I’d encourage you to come see me tomorrow.”

And she had gone to see him the next day. It was where she was introduced to the DEO, and everything they did.

“You see,” Hank had explained as he gave her a tour of the facility. “I don’t think Lena Luthor is the last vampire around.”

Alex had been shocked at hearing that. “Why haven’t you let the whole world know about it?”

It was there that she learned about long-games, espionage, and a whole slew of other tactics that were in that infamous gray area of legality.

“To let the world know would mean to create panic for humans, and to force those pesky vampires to regroup. We need them to show their hand. And I believe Lena Luthor is at the center of it.”

Although she had been itching to join that very same day, Hank had turned her down and instead made her an offer. She could join after she graduated college, and Alex had agreed. After that, she had begun reading up on all that she could, and she was nothing if not studious, in order to be prepared for when that day would come.

When it did, Alex had been more than happy to join the cause, even if it meant that she had to keep it all a secret from her family. As much as it tore her up to lie day after day, Henshaw had explained, “Secrecy is the main ingredient of our success. Your father did the same thing. He knew what was at stake. This isn’t for everyone, and you have no idea what the wrong person might do with the information they acquire.”

Which was why, when Winn had managed to hack Samantha Arias’ phone, and she saw the messages, her stomach had churned. Particularly because it involved her sister.

“Maybe it’s good ole millennial humour?” Winn had attempted to reason.

“Yeah, with a centuries-old vampire?” Vasquez had shot back, smacking him in the arm. “Doubt it. Now that Luthor has her victim beholden to her, she can do whatever she wants. This is a clear sign of her intentions, disguised as a joke.”

Alex agreed. This wasn’t in jest at all. She had read about the sacrificial altars. She knew that these were just the things that vampires did. 

And back in the present, as Vasquez had just pointed out some minutes ago, a willing victim was much more potent.

There were countless books and research written about it, how could Kara be so blind? Was she that infatuated?

Though the trip down memory lane had managed to quell some of her anxiety, having her thoughts rounding back to Kara made Alex now feel like she was running out of air. So she decided to step outside.

Right at the moment she felt the cool autumn breeze hit her face, she began to hear rapid fire coming from another side of the building.

“What the fuck?” Alex murmured, reaching behind her and unholstering her weapon. 

She didn’t manage to make it around the corner before she was hearing a scream.

Two screams.

As Alex looked up at the source, her heart caught in her throat as she saw her own sister leaping off the building with Lena in her arms.

* * *

Kara felt the air around her pulling them down towards the ground rapidly. She tried to concentrate and held Lena tightly as she willed her body to move up.

Preferably before they pancaked onto the gravel.

“Kara!” Lena screamed, as she squinted her eyes closed and tucked her head into Kara’s neck.

And suddenly, they were no longer falling, but rising.

Although Kara wouldn’t ever truly be able to pinpoint what _exactly_ had kickstarted her flying, she was forever convinced that feeling Lena’s hot air on her neck did the trick. It made her feel elated and giddy.

And maybe some other things she wasn’t fully aware of.

Pushing through the air, Kara sped up their rise, faintly hearing the guards that had been shooting at them looking around the rooftop now far below them. With her super-hearing, she was able to hear that they were trying to ascertain where Kara and Lena could have possibly gone, looking around and below, never up. 

As fortuitous as it might seem, apparently no one had seen Kara and Lena fly off. They had managed to jump off before the first guard had reached the roof, and the rest of the squadron had apparently missed their take-off into the sky.

She chanced a final glance to make sure they were truly getting away unnoticed, and saw only one person looking back up at her.

Alex.

Pursing her lips, Kara looked away and she continued to fly off higher to use the cloud cover to hide them. She couldn’t believe her own sister would bring in an entire strike team and create this entire plan to capture and probably kill Lena.

“Okay, I think we’re safe,” Kara said, breathing a sigh of relief as they stopped rising, figuring they both needed a breather. 

“I- you. What the hell just happened?” Lena asked in a voice that told Kara in no uncertain terms that she wanted answers.

Kara attempted to shrug as much as she could without jostling her passenger. “I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Lena was perplexed at Kara’s answer. “What do you mean you have no idea? They were in _your_ apartment!”

“Wh- I didn’t know this was going to be an ambush!” Kara sputtered, trying to defend herself. 

“Then how did they come in? Pretended to be from the gas company?” Lena retorted, brows furrowing and eyes narrowing.

“No! My sister was there, with her... coworkers? And her boss? And nearly all of them were armed to the teeth!” Kara was growing nervous that Lena wouldn’t believe her, so she started rambling to continue to explain, “I thought she was just a government analyst, but clearly, she’s been lying to me and keeping this whole thing a secret, so like I said, I have no idea. Please believe me Lena, I would never do this to you.”

Lena realized then that she was deflecting her anger at the situation to the wrong person, and she breathed deeply to will her fear and anger to tamper down. She also realized that she hadn’t put her hood up, which was probably why she was developing a nasty headache, being much closer to the sun. 

Using one of her hands, the other holding steadfast to Kara’s shoulder, Lena put her hood up and looked at Kara as she said, “Of course I believe you; I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped at you, this is just...I’m trying to understand what happened.”

“Of course, and trust me, I want to find out just as badly as you, but maybe now we should probably focus on getting someplace safe? I’m just flying around and you shouldn’t be out in the sun, but I have no idea where to even go…”

“Right...how about we still head to my place? We’ll be safe there.” Lena had to admire the way that Kara was staying cool, while Lena knew without a doubt that she herself was beyond rattled.

“Sure, lead the way.”

After Lena took a few minutes to explain where the mansion was located, Kara nodded in understanding and started flying them there, staying close to the clouds to hide, just in case. She was sure that people would notice two women - one of them with bullet-torn clothes - roaming around National City, as would planes and other flying objects, so the cloud cover was a blessing.

They travelled mostly in silence, both processing the ordeal from the morning.

At one point, Kara realized something. “So ah...I hope you didn’t need anything from your car? I don’t think we’ll be able to go back there for a while.”

Lena chuckled. “It’s fine. I can imagine that the car will be scrap parts before the day is over, probably trying to find proof of some nefarious plan hidden in the engine.”

Kara let out her own laugh at that. “But what about your clothes? Weren’t you bringing anything with you for the weekend?”

“Not exactly. Where we’re going is the real place I live at, so most of my clothes are there,” Lena explained. “The apartment in the city is for the most part a cover, an address to put on government forms. I only keep the bare minimum there, and use it during the week to refresh and change.”

“Ah, gotcha,” Kara nodded.

As they fell silent again, Lena was curious and voiced a nagging question. “How did they know I was going to be there? I- I’m not accusing you, it’s just that it all seems like way too much to be just a coincidence, and to be honest, I don’t believe in coincidences anyway.”

“They hacked your friend Sam’s phone,” Kara responded succinctly. “They came into my place saying that they had something to show me in the texts.”

Lena frowned. “What did they possibly think was so incriminating? I only started to talk to Sam again recently.”

“Something about sacrificial altars?” Kara murmured, almost worried as to what mentioning that might do to Lena’s already frazzled disposition.

But Lena was composed, in fact, she didn’t even seem to react, except to say, “Can you go a little lower? I think we’re here.”

Kara did as asked, and frowned as she looked down to see the wilderness, tall trees as far as she could see, and there didn’t seem to be any houses beneath the canopy of trees. “Are you sure? There’s nothing around here for miles.”

And truly, they were in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even a street nearby, just dozens of trees and some fields farther into the distance.

“Yes well, that would be the cloaking wards I put up in this place,” Lena admitted, deftly trying to take her cellphone out of her jacket pocket. Once she had it in her hand, she continued, “Now, this is where it gets tricky. I currently have it set so that I’m the only one who can go in while it is active, but I can turn it off momentarily so you can fly in.

“So, when I tell you to, fly towards that tall aspen tree. You’ll need to be relatively quick, as I will only be able to turn it off for a few seconds, is that okay?”

Kara looked to where Lena pointed, seeing the tree with yellow leaves, and nodded. “Ready.”

Lena hummed in acknowledgement, and got busy on her phone, tapping away. “And, now!”

Using all of the skills she had gained from flying for less than an hour, Kara sped towards the aspen, only to find herself now looking at an expansive estate. The aspen tree was still there, as were some of the trees around the perimeter, but the rest of the forest she had been seeing before was now gone, instead replaced by Lena’s home.

Kara gracefully landed, touching down by the front entrance, and she let Lena get back to her feet beside her, as Kara was left gaping up at the hidden structure. “How-”

Lena had to chuckle at Kara’s wonder and began prattling off the many techniques she used. “It involves some coding, biological equations, force fields, and holograms. I can show it and explain it to you later, if you’d like?”

“Would I? Of course I would!” Kara looked absolutely delighted at the idea. “This is incredible Lena! How did you think to come up with this?”

“Decades and centuries of studying,” Lena responded with a soft smile, heart fluttering at Kara’s praise, knowing that the complexity of the project wouldn’t faze her very smart companion. “How about we head inside?”

“Right, I imagine the sun must be getting to you.”

Lena hummed noncommittally, not wanting to admit that it went beyond that. Between the pounding headache she was sporting, and the way her face, the nape of her neck and her hands stung, the sun had done quite some damage to her during their escape from Kara’s apartment. But she didn’t want Kara to worry. Composing herself, Lena just beckoned Kara to follow her, and headed up the steps and towards the mansion.

As Lena brought her hands up to unlock the door, she saw how the back of her hands looked like she’d run them through soot, darkened and dried. She swallowed hard, and briefly wondered if Kara would be opposed to letting her feed today. She shot the idea before it could fester. Kara looked very much worse for wear, and after the entire ordeal they’d both been through, she wouldn’t be the terrible host by trying to get Kara to do even more for her.

No, she’d just let Kara have today for herself, and tomorrow she’d see if her friend was up for the task. She’d survived worse, a little literal sunburn was nothing.

Except, as luck would have it, Kara approached Lena, and she saw the vampire’s hands, which led her to promptly exclaim, “Lena! Your hands! Are you okay?”

Lena pushed the door open and beckoned Kara inside. “Yes, just a side-effect of being out in the sun for too long. I’ll be fine.”

As Kara and Lena went inside, the former was at a loss. “This is more than just a side effect! I - do you need to feed from me or?”

“I appreciate the concern, Kara, but I’m fine, I’m more worried about you,” Lena said, gesturing towards Kara’s general dishevelled appearance. Now that they were out of the sun, she could fully take in how Kara was looking. She truly did look like she’d taken on an entire firing squad, and thankfully won.

Kara looked down at herself. Her clothes were tattered. “Oh this? I’m fine, they bounced right off me.”

Something then clicked for Lena, and she tried to figure out the best way to voice her thoughts. “I’m really not trying to judge your sister for her participation in this, but you do realize that the soldiers she works with had zero qualms about shooting at you?”

Kara fidgeted and went up to adjust the glasses that were no longer there, before awkwardly bringing her hand back down, her gaze falling to the marble tiles on the floor. “I-I hadn’t...”

Lena went up and tenderly brought her hand to Kara’s shoulders, as if she was afraid that Kara would reject the touch. But Kara didn’t flinch, it almost seemed like she welcomed the touch, and through the broken fabric, Lena could feel Kara’s warm skin. 

“It’s okay to feel overwhelmed. A lot has happened, and I think that right now, the best thing is for me to give you some privacy. I can show you to your room, it has a fully-stocked en-suite bathroom for you to freshen yourself up, and if you want to take a shower, you can. Once you’re ready, I’ll be in the kitchen just through the hall there, making us some brunch. How does that sound?”

With a wordless nod, Kara agreed. She still didn’t meet Lena’s eyes, and the latter felt guilty for having brought the subject up. Still, she wouldn’t press. She led Kara up the staircase and through the long hallway towards the guest bedroom. Lena had used the past weekend to get things ready for Kara, never imagining that it would be under these circumstances.

“Here we go. If you need anything, just call, okay?” Lena said, gesturing for her to enter the room.

But Kara didn’t move, instead fidgeting now with the straps of her bag.

“Kara?” Lena asked, tentatively stepping closer.

To her immense surprise, Kara sprung forward to hug Lena, and she was sure she heard the faintest of a strangled sob coming from Kara.

After the initial shock wore off, Lena melted into the hug, bringing her arms to hug Kara back, hands coming to rest in the middle of her back.

“Thank you,” Kara murmured, voice strained as if she were fighting to not cry. “For believing and trusting me.”

Lena’s metaphorical heart practically broke at the words. “Of course I do Kara. And frankly, I should be the one saying that to you.”

Kara just hugged tighter, having run out of words, just knowing they both needed the comfort and reassurances more than anything.

* * *

Alex had been gaping as she watched her sister disappear into the clouds above, but the minute she saw her boss stepping out of the building with Vasquez and Schott in tow, her surprise morphed into fury. “What the hell was that?!”

Henshaw’s disposition wasn’t a lot sunnier. He pointed at her. “We are going to have words. But first, I need to contain this.” 

He turned to the two agents trailing him, and Alex noted that the equipment cases Winn was holding were now very damaged. “Vasquez, go prep the SUV. Schott, load the equipment onto the trunk, and then meet up the techs down the street and check out Ms. Luthor’s car. If needed, take it to the facility and pull it apart. If there’s anything of note in that car, even if it’s a peculiar screw used in the headrest or a specific song on her playlist, I want to know about it, understood?”

Both of them nodded and went to do their assigned tasks. Then, Henshaw pressed a button on his earpiece. “Sergeant, what’s the status?”

The man on the other side of the conversation, who Alex saw was on the roof gesticulating wildly, seemed to be trying to explain something to Henshaw.

“I see. Well, get your men to clean up as much as you can. I’m already seeing a crowd forming, and I’m imagining the mayor will be wanting to have some words. I will meet you back at the base at 1600 hours.”

They signed off and once again, Henshaw turned to Alex.

Before he could say anything, Alex was once more gritting her teeth and pointing to the squad on the roof. “Why the fuck did I hear them shooting at my sister?!”

With a calmness that left no room for doubt that he was very upset with her, Henshaw uttered, “Agent Danvers. I will remind you that we are on a mission, and while on the field, we don’t discuss sensitive topics. Additionally, as your commanding officer, you are to speak and refer to me with respect. Is that clear?”

Alex huffed but still nodded, standing just a bit straighter. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now get in. You’ll be riding with me in the back, as we have some matters to discuss, privately. ” Henshaw gestured towards the idling SUV with Vasquez in the driver’s seat.

Once they were both inside, Henshaw ordered Vasquez to take them to their base out in the desert, and closed the partition, citing privacy. After the partition was fully up, he turned to Alex. “Now, do you mind explaining to me what in the world I just witnessed?”

“Sir-”

He held up a hand to silence her. “Before you try to spin me a story, let me explain to you what happened, and what I saw. We went to your sister’s apartment, under the assumption that she was in danger of Ms. Luthor’s machinations. We were lying in wait to apprehend her, and when I nearly had Ms. Luthor in my grasp, your sister manages to bowl me over with the equipment cases that Agent Schott could barely hoist by himself, and he is someone that I would have surmised to be at about the same level as your sister in terms of physical deftness, or lack thereof. After that magnificent show of strength, she not only escaped with Ms. Luthor, but seemingly also managed to evade all of the strike team’s attempts at apprehending her, before vanishing into thin air, according to the Sergeant.

“And imagine my surprise when I looked out the door of the building after I rushed downstairs, and saw your sister _flying_ off into the sky. Now, Agent Danvers, care to explain yourself?”

Alex’s bravado vanished in two seconds flat, and Henshaw noted as much.

“I can see that the bluster and crass attitude has vacated, hasn’t it? _What_ exactly, is your sister?”

At that moment, Alex was keenly aware of three things. One - forever ago, she had promised her parents to never divulge Kara’s secret; two - she also knew that if she did, she would lose Kara forever, and three - she was growing exceptionally weary of the Director’s sudden and very keen interest in her sister. Within seconds, she composed herself, knowing what she had to do.

With a sigh, Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. “The jig is up huh?”

Henshaw nodded gravely. “Yes, unless you want to be arrested for obstruction. And I’d hate to lose my best agent to such a crime.”

Alex rubbed the back of her neck before saying, “Look, to be honest, there’s some parts that I don’t even know.”

“How about you start explaining yourself?”

“Alright: my sister is an alien. She came to Earth as a teenager, and she’s been here ever since,” Alex explained, choosing to keep it simple to start.

Henshaw frowned, surprised at the revelation. “Why did Jeremiah never tell me this?”

Alex grimaced. “It was right at the height of the whole Superman and Lex debacle. He probably didn’t want to worry you with it, and then well-”

He understood. Jeremiah had been murdered only weeks after. “I see. Go on, tell me more. What are her powers?”

“See, that I don’t really know,” Alex began with a sheepish smile. “After she landed, my parents, they sort of encouraged her to assimilate. You know very well about how people feel about those who are ‘different’, if you catch my drift. Honestly, I didn’t even know she flew. All I knew was that she was super smart, and that was about it.”

Henshaw looked pensive. “Well, you can add strength, and bullet-proof to the list.”

“Bullet-proof?” Alex let out a harried laugh. “Kara? No way, she’s the world’s biggest drama queen whenever she gets a paper-cut.”

“Well either that or my men have all turned into Storm Troopers,” Henshaw deadpanned. “What planet did you say your sister was from again?”

“I didn’t, because I don’t know.” Alex was keenly aware of her boss’ rapidfire questions, trying to get her to divulge something by tripping her up. “I mean, I know she told us when she got here, but I was a teenager, the last thing I wanted was to learn about an alien civilization.”

Henshaw nodded. “And how did she come to be here?”

“Oh, that I remember bits and pieces of. She was on a ship with her... family I think it was? Anyway, they’re going through an asteroid belt, get hit by some, engines failing, they put Kara in a tiny craft to escape, and unfortunately she was the only survivor.” Alex could only hope that the half-truths she was spewing was helping to sell the story she was weaving.

So far, it seemed that either Henshaw was buying it, or was pretending in order to allow Alex to keep digging her grave. “Would you happen to know her species?”

“Oh, I know this one, it’s at the tip of my tongue. It’s a really long and complicated one,” Alex muttered, making a show as if she were trying to remember that piece of information. “Shit, I can’t remember, sorry. I just remember it was really long.”

“I see. And I’m assuming her real name is not Kara Danvers?”

“Well, her first name is Kara, but they had a weird naming system, lots of consonants and weird sounds,” Alex tried to explain. “Look, I’m really sorry Director, but I’m really not that well-versed in my sister’s background. Like I said, at the time I couldn’t have cared less, and never bothered after that.”

“Would Eliza know more?” Henshaw ventured to ask, and that’s when the alarms began ringing for Alex.

“I...doubt it, to be entirely honest. That time period was a pretty rough moment for her, well, for all of us, and she’s probably blocked it all out. I can try to ask her when I head over to Midvale later today?”

“That’s an excellent idea, Agent Danvers. Any information we can get on your sister will be important.”

Alex frowned at his wording. “Sir... _why_ are you so interested in my sister?”

Henshaw sighed, his posture changing slightly as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I’m sorry to say this, Alex, but your sister is now considered an enemy of the state.”

“She’s what?! Because she flew away, because she has _powers_?” Alex was growing more mortified by the minute.

“No. It’s because she escaped our custody, and helped Lena Luthor escape. Not to mention that her stint has cost us thousands of hours of research and preparation which are now down the drain, and now Ms. Luthor has us out in the open and we’re no closer to figuring out her plan.” Henshaw let out a small groan. “We were so close. And your sister somehow single-handedly managed to escape the entire DEO armed with nothing but her cardigan.”

* * *

After Kara and Lena had parted from their impromptu hug, Lena had left Kara to get settled in her room, take a shower and freshen up, while she headed to the kitchen to prepare brunch for a veritable army.

Half an hour later, Lena had finished, just in time for Kara to enter and look at the table piled with food with something akin to wonder. “Whoa, Lena! Was I gone for that long?”

Lena chuckled and shook her head. “No, I just tend to cook a lot when I’m nervous, and as you can imagine, the past few weeks have given me plenty of energy to cook. Which means that I just had a lot saved up, and I haven’t too much of an idea as to what you might like to eat, so I prepared a little bit of everything.”

Kara was absolutely speechless. “This is incredible Lena, thank you. You’re really amazing.”

With a quick dismissive wave of her hand, Lena tried to take the attention from herself. “Come on, I’m sure you’re starving.”

“Actually,” Kara began, shuffling from one foot to the other, biting her lip. Lena had noticed that Kara was once more wearing her glasses and she could see the necklace chain, where it peeked from under her shirt.

“Yes?”

“Are you sure you don’t need to feed?” Kara blurted, looking at the other woman right in the eye. “I know you said you didn’t. But come on, I’m right here, I’m fine, and I’d hate for you to be in pain just because you feel it might inconvenience me.”

Lena sighed and looked away, crossing her arms in front of her. She felt Kara’s silent approach, as well as a gentle finger hooking under her chin to tilt her head back up to look at blue eyes criminally hidden behind those thick fake glasses.

Neither of them were sure where their newfound proximity and comfort through physical touches had come from, but probably almost jumping to their deaths before managing to fly halfway across the city after getting shot at by a covert branch of government would fit the bill.

“Lena, please let me help you. You know I’ll heal, and you have prepared so much food that I’ll be able to replenish my energy no problem. I don’t want you to be in pain.”

And Lena was powerless against Kara’s soft words and even softer voice. If she kept this up, Lena would be kissing her before the end of the day.

“Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is where I leave you until the new year. With the prospect of more sweet moments between our ladies, while also letting you wonder what Henshaw might be planning.
> 
> I will say this: there is a bit of a trick towards what's happening, and I'm wondering if anyone has caught on yet.
> 
> I'll be back in the new year with more!


End file.
